


tides turning

by gauras



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Domestic Fluff, First Kiss, Literal Sleeping Together, Love Confessions, M/M, Relationship Negotiation, Season/Series 04, Set in Episodes 159-160 | Scottish Safehouse Period (The Magnus Archives), in the smallest most domestic ways possible, to be honest this is just a grab bag of tender tropes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:29:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24845341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gauras/pseuds/gauras
Summary: There's more than one way to sayI love you.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 142
Kudos: 615
Collections: RaeLynn's Epic Rec List





	tides turning

**Author's Note:**

> first, thank u so, _so_ much to @[sapphicbecca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicbecca/pseuds/sapphicbecca) and @[kosy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/kosy) for their help with this monstrosity! without their wisdom, there's a very high chance this would have sat in my drafts forever, never to see the light of day. please check out their stuff if u haven't already!!
> 
> welcome to scottish domesticity... TWO!! i know i've already written One of the damn things, but i know who i am and what i'm about and it is, apparently, those three weeks of bliss. i refuse to apologize!
> 
> additional content warnings: brief body/eye horror in the first section, discussions of jon and martin's neglectful childhoods with a thin veneer of "this is fine! :)", discussion of spiders, discussion of sexuality and relationship boundaries (just... a lot of discussion)
> 
> special thanks to [these](https://50-item-writing-prompts.tumblr.com/post/180600714495/50-wordless-ways-to-say-i-love-you-holding-their) [two](https://sherlynsherlyn.tumblr.com/post/161884253594/101-ways-to-say-i-love-you) posts for getting the 🥺 flowing. title from bat for lashes' [deep sea diver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6tpMFjepyE)

At nearly half past two on a Tuesday in September, King’s Cross is packed with things that wish they were people. With how close they press together, dead-eyed like sardines in a tin and stewing in their own soupy juices, the crush of the crowd is nearly unbearable. The air _reeks_ of their stench—sweat and unwashed bodies and too-full rubbish bins—while their wordless, murmuring cacophony swells to fill the high-vaulted ceiling.

Martin squeezes his eyes shut, then drags them back open, reluctant to leave himself vulnerable to these empty husks for even a moment. Who knew the hollow mockery of human beings could generate so much _sensation,_ sending wave upon implacable wave of stimuli to beat against Martin’s already battered senses.

He’s seen the creatures before this in recent months: lurking in the dimmed corners of his favorite Tesco, tailing him on his way into work, idling about the park when it’s sunny. Always with their blank faces of stretched skin and smeared dark streaks for eyes. Always just one or two, never a swarm like now.

He misses the quiet of his office. The husks seemed to avoid the Institute—everyone there at least had eyes.

There’s so many of them, moaning through their nonexistent mouths, and Martin feels himself slip a bit. He breathes deep—unsure whether it’s a wail building in his lungs or a sob or nothing at all—when Jon appears before him, eyes and mouth and nose intact, with several slips of paper clutched, crumpled, in his fist.

“Fifteen minutes,” he tells Martin, raising his voice over the meaningless, unceasing din. “Think you can manage?”

No. Probably not. Martin nods anyway. Jon looks at him for a long moment, far too soft and searching, and Martin has to drop his gaze, eyes falling instead to the rumpled collar of Jon’s cardie, pretty salmon pink layered atop his creamy white button-up and bunched all funny under the straps of his knapsack. He wants to smooth it out, feel the soft knit below his fingers. At his wrists, the scratchy cuffs of his own woolen jumper feel like coils of barbed wire.

“Right, then,” Jon mutters, turning to face the seething mass of nothing-things. Wordlessly, Martin trails behind, following him to the station platform.

Impossibly, the creatures press closer here, straining to stand on the platform edge, playing at being anxious to be first on the train. Martin clips one of them in the shoulder and the contact _burns,_ like jamming a fork into a power socket, like plunging frostbitten hands into boiling water. He twists a bit from the collision and more of the husks careen past, except—

They all have _faces._

Gone are the oddly familiar blank canvases of swirled flesh, the burst, sloppy, not-quite-eyes; in their places are sneering, gnashing mouths, rolling eyes that ogle Martin’s slack-jawed breathlessness. In that moment, he’s painfully aware how completely surrounded and _seen_ he is. From every side, every angle. People—so many people—are around him and they are watching him, taking note of him, _judging_ him.

Foolishly and all at once, Martin wishes for the protective distance the Lonely brought—how it settled like a thick, impenetrable pane of glass between him and the rest of the world. Wishes his edges were foggy and hazy so he could slip past, unnoticed, and escape the prying stares.

But he abandoned the Lonely, and now, caught in the throng of leering spectators, Martin feels like a sad, stupid goldfish. Like someone took his cozy bowl and dropped it on the pavement, like the glass isolating him—keeping him _safe—_ has shattered, leaving him wanting to collapse under the aching weight of his own body being perceived and gape on the station platform, breathless as a fish suffocating on land.

It’s a panic attack. It can’t be anything other than a panic attack.

The knowledge comes to him, unbidden and distant, as he’s jostled to and fro, struggling all alone but still so horribly noticed. Each touch zings along his nerves, lighting up trailing lines of agony, but the people around him are impassive, unmoved by his distress, the curious weight of their observation smothering him slowly.

“-artin? _Martin.”_ Someone is calling his name. Martin looks up, bewildered—he is _seen,_ but he is not _known—_ and finds Jon, stood startlingly close and eyes intense upon his face. It’s just as unbearable as all the others, but something about this fact is comforting.

_“Jon,”_ Martin tries to say, but it comes out an unintelligible, garbled mess. Jon’s gaze flickers over the surrounding people, brow furrowed, before his eyes widen in understanding, mouth falling into a soft _o_ of comprehension.

He swoops in even closer, hands coming up to grip Martin’s forearms tightly. “Look at me, Martin,” he urges, in that quiet yet forceful way he has, “look at me, not them. You’ll be alright. Just try to breathe, okay?”

Martin tries to comply—stares desperately into Jon’s eyes, wide and fathoms deep, tries to ignore the searing pain that blossoms at each careless brush from a stranger, breathes around the building scream that draws tight bands of pressure around his chest. He just looks and pants and feels the branding heat of Jon’s thumbs pressed into the crooks of his elbows.

It takes nearly the full fifteen minutes for him to calm down enough for coherent thought to resurface. Their train pulls into the station but Jon doesn’t even look at it; he has eyes only for Martin.

“Better?” Jon asks, rubbing his thumbs back and forth against Martin’s jumper, its coarse weave scraping across his overstimulated skin. It’s almost too much.

Martin’s lips are cracked and pull unpleasantly when he opens his mouth to respond, but he hesitates, peering instead at the people pushing towards the train. The person next to him has soft, hazel eyes, a fact that fills him with only low level dread. They studiously avoid meeting Martin’s gaze. He wonders, then, if his own eyes have ruptured and dripped down his cheeks from fighting back tears. He certainly feels empty enough to deserve a spot amongst those vacant shells.

Jon is still waiting for a response, worry tugging his lips into a pinched frown. Martin shrugs. “Fine,” he manages, then jerks his chin at the filling train, shaking off Jon’s hands. Jon quickly lets him go. Martin readjusts his grip on his bag, sidesteps a family with two squalling babies—one father’s eyes are glass-bottle green, the other’s rich amber. Neither of them pay him any mind—and leads the way towards one of the less popular cars, Jon a half-step behind him.

Somewhere along a stretch of empty track, a young woman gets up from her seat and half-blocks the train’s central aisle. Her hands shake as she stretches to fiddle with the zips on her suitcase, struggling to pry something out from its depths. She is nondescript—her hair bleached blonde, roots growing out, thumb nails painted with chipped orange varnish—the sort of woman Martin probably wouldn’t really notice if he passed her on the street.

Jon’s eyes are riveted to her, oddly lustrous. There is a hungry, nearly desperate, air about him.

Curled next to him on the narrow bench, Martin has no choice but to watch Jon watch her, taut like a cat perched on a windowsill, chattering at the birds outside. She finally tugs free a narrow book and zips her bag shut, turning away to reclaim her seat, and it’s like there’s an invisible thread connecting her and Jon; he leans forward as she walks away, cranes his head to track her progress, begins to get up to give chase.

Martin doesn’t think; his hand shoots out to latch onto Jon’s, ignoring the blistering heat that lights up under his skin. Jon blinks at him, confused, then blanches when he realizes what he’s nearly done, expression one of resigned revulsion. He squeezes Martin’s hand in silent thanks, but does not resist when Martin carefully disentangles their fingers.

Martin flashes him a shaky smile. It’s weakly returned. Jon then shifts in his seat, leans his side on the armrest between them, and looks out the window at the blurred scenery.

He falls asleep like that, slumped sideways, lolling head caught in the crack between their seats and soft hair tickling Martin’s neck.

Barely a half hour later, a judder in the train jerks Jon awake, the sky beyond the window a bloodbath of reds and hazy purples. He flinches upright, searching wildly about their mostly deserted car, relaxing only when he finds Martin next to him.

“Martin,” he sighs, slurred slightly by sleep. He looks soft and careworn, with lines on his temple from where it rested against Martin’s seat. Then he blinks, and squints at Martin’s face, and looks a great deal more worried. “You should rest,” he says, gently coaxing, like one would talk to a child. It’s wholly unnerving to hear.

Martin shakes his head. It’s too soon. He needs to keep up his silent vigil, because to fall asleep would risk waking up from this lovely dream, risk finding himself alone in his flat, beached helpless like a whale and crusted with sand.

“It’ll be fine. I’ll… keep my eyes, ah, _peeled_ for any signs of,” Jon gestures loosely, “you know.”

Martin wants to decline, content to press his bicep against Jon's sweetly simmering inferno, but what slips out, pathetic and small and rusted, is, "You'll still be here?"

"Oh." Jon looks down, wringing the hem of his cardie between his hands. "Yes, I'll be here when you wake." Then, with sudden fervor, he looks back up, meeting Martin's eyes, "I promise."

"... Okay," Martin whispers, then shuffles down in his seat to submerge himself in Jon's heat, cheek pillowed against his shoulder.

The train rumbles along.

* * *

The safehouse is far less utilitarian than Martin expected. It’s small, yes, barely three rooms and a bath, but it’s _cozy,_ and as his phone’s torch cuts through the dark to reveal quaint, fading floral wallpaper, Martin realizes the odd feeling stirring in his chest is delight—it cuts neatly through his fugue in a way few things have managed.

The lingering emptiness seems to be receding with every passing moment, ebbing from high tide to low.

Despite the late hour, Martin finds himself decidedly awake and present in a way he’s not been for a long time, but a quick glance at Jon reveals he's the only one feeling quite so invigorated. Jon hides an explosive yawn behind his hand, dropping his bag by the door, his own phone shining out from his shirt’s breast pocket.

"Bed?" Jon asks, simply, lowly, as though it's a given that _bed_ will involve him and Martin, together. Somewhere between his lungs, a slow, sweet ache unfurls—a feeling he’d rather thought had died somewhere during his tenure as Peter’s assistant.

"You go ahead," Martin replies, voice hoarse. He clears his throat, quietly, "I thought I might have a peek around."

Jon looks a little stunned to hear so many consecutive words from Martin, but he quickly shakes off his surprise. "I'll join you." His tone, though worn, is firm.

"If you want." That ache blossoms into a warm, pleased flush, fluttery like moths set aflame. It's… nice. Not panic-inducing, or scorching, or overwhelming. Just nice.

They start with the cramped kitchen, which is, perhaps, a mistake, because almost immediately Martin’s torch beam falls across an old, dull kettle and a box of tea in the first cupboard he opens. After setting his phone on the counter so it illuminates the whole room, he turns to Jon, prizes cradled in his hands, and finds him leant against the doorjamb, watching Martin with a terribly small smile on his face.

"Check it out,” he says, fighting off his blush, and raises his eyebrows, “old fashioned.” Jon laughs, ever so softly, and comes into the room, taking the box of tea from Martin to examine it. The way the torchlight catches on his eyelashes—limning each translucent tip with blue-white and casting their spindly shadows over his skin—is fascinating. “Fancy a cuppa?"

In the quiet, he hears Jon’s breath catch. "I'd love one, Martin," he breathes.

“O-okay.” Martin is certain he imagines the reverence in Jon’s voice. He takes the kettle to the sink and flips on the tap. It takes a moment, pipes groaning tiredly, before rust tinged water spews forth.

Behind him, Jon clears his throat. "Ah. Lemon ginger. Do you think Dai—H-hang on, this is two years out of date!"

Martin shrugs, watching bubbles swirl inside the kettle. “Just means you have to steep it longer.”

“Well, you’re the tea expert, so I’ll defer to your judgement.”

Perhaps it’s Jon’s audible smile, or perhaps it’s the familiar, soothing motions of filling a kettle for tea, but Martin finds himself relaxing and says, “Well, I mean, ‘course you will. The entirety of the world’s knowledge at your fingertips, and I bet your tea is still shite.” Immediately, he winces.

There’s a pause, during which Martin quietly panics—of _course_ the moment he begins to feel a bit more like himself, the moment they start really talking for the first time in, _god,_ months, he has to go and open his mouth and say something like _that—_ but then Jon snorts from behind him, a screech filling the air as he pulls out one of the table’s mismatched chairs to sit down. “That’s fair. Most of what I make is either too weak or horribly bitter. Never can seem to get it perfect like you do.”

“Oh! That’s, um, well—That’s, that’s nice to hear.” Martin trips over his words, shoulders hunched up by his burning ears. They’ve worked together for years and he knows, logically, that Jon likes his tea, despite never saying so. Which, yeah, bit dickish, but finally hearing it still sets the center of Martin’s chest aglow.

Martin shakes his head at himself, sets the kettle on the hob, and turns the knob of the ancient gas burner.

Nothing happens.

He stares, then groans, good mood, if it can be described as such, dissolving—sugar in water.

“Something the matter?” Jon asks, then inhales sharply and continues on without waiting for a response, “Oh. The gas.”

“The gas,” Martin confirms, hating how his voice wobbles, staring down at the dark burner. “A-and the power too, probably. We’re lucky the water even works.” It’s stupid, but—he just wanted a chance at normalcy. Routine. Safe, familiar ground, but there it goes—crumbling into the sea.

Jon sidles up next to him and leans in to peer at where the kettle sits, cold and sulky and dusty. Martin feels eyes upon the side of his face and bites his lip, refusing to look over. He’s fine. He’s not upset.

“I know what to do,” Jon says after a beat, strangely confident, “wait here. I’ll figure it out.”

“Jon, wait—” Martin reaches for him, but it’s too late; he’s already gone. “It’s not a big deal,” he tells the empty kitchen. His voice sounds hollow.

Martin pokes, half-heartedly, through a few more cupboards and drawers to keep himself busy. He finds an eclectic collection of mugs and pulls two out in a petty act of defiance against the silent hob and drops a tea bag into each one. Then he drums his fingers on the counter, watching their shadows warp and distort from his torch’s stark light. He wiggles them, entertaining himself with letting the spidery shapes scurry jerkily up the wall.

The front door slams. “Martin, try something,” Jon calls, sounding out of breath. “Is it working?”

Martin reaches for the hood lamp and flicks the switch. Dull yellow light floods the room. He laughs under his breath, incredulous, then tries the hob again. A ring of blue flame sparks to life under the kettle.

“Yeah,” Martin shouts back, the loudness of his own voice slightly unsettling. In the other room, Jon sighs in relief. “H-how—What did you _do?”_

Jon comes back into the kitchen, cheeks reddened from the cold. Hands stuffed into his pockets, he shrugs, scuffing the tip of his shoe against the lino. “I fixed it.” Enlightening.

“Well… thanks.” Martin fidgets with his phone, tapping off the torch. Jon hums, falling back into his seat, stretching out his legs and pinching the bridge of his nose as he tips his head back. There are some greyish, oily streaks along his cardie’s cuffs, which is an honest shame; it’s always been one of Martin’s favorites. Martin takes the other chair while Jon knuckles his forehead, face drawn in a faint grimace. A sudden headache, perhaps? “Wait. You didn’t—you didn’t _Know,_ did you?”

One eye opens a slit. “I—Maybe?”

“Jon…” Martin sighs, burying the part of him that squirms happily at Jon Knowing something _for_ him, “that’s probably not a _great_ idea. We should, I don’t know, try to avoid that? If we can?”

“It’s not like I generally do it on _purpose,”_ Jon snaps, then presses at the hollows of his eyes with the tips of his fingers. “No, you’re right. Should probably try to limit my, ah, _reliance_ on the Eye.” He looks away, to where the kettle is merrily bubbling, thin trails of steam seeping out from its ill-fitting lid. “I just wanted—It seemed important to you,” he mutters.

Martin doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s not _used_ to this—talking, caring, giving and receiving. Not anymore.

“So,” Martin says after the moment passes, drawing the _o_ out long, “we have power and gas.”

“Mm.”

“And water.”

“Yes. I don’t know if you saw, but there’s a fireplace in the other room.”

“Huh. Charming.”

“I suppose. I’ll admit, I don’t have much faith in my skill at chopping wood. The Eye can grant me any Knowledge It likes, but I’m afraid that’s where my strength begins and ends.”

Martin smiles to himself at the image of Jon wielding an axe, splitting logs, shirt unbuttoned low and sleeves rolled up to reveal the wiry muscle of his forearms, then shakes himself. Too far. Jon grins at him, in that fantasy, wide and warm. _Much_ too far.

“I accept all wood chopping duties,” Martin says instead, mock serious, “but you’re in charge of building the fire.”

Jon pretends to consider, leaning his elbows on the table and cupping his chin in faux academic deliberation. It’s unfairly cute. 

Martin blinks. He hasn’t… _Cute._ It’s been a long time, since he’s thought about Jon in that way, and it’s reassuring to know that this, at least, hasn’t been stolen from him.

“Fine,” Jon says, nose briefly scrunching up, “I mean, how hard can building a fire be?”

“... You haven’t the slightest clue where to begin, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” Jon admits. Martin snorts and Jon smiles, and it’s then that Martin realizes how close they are, leant over the table, drawn, inexorably, into each other’s space. This close, he can see the scraggly, silver-studded stubble that lines Jon’s jaw, the scarred patches where hair no longer grows. Jon inhales, the weight of his gaze heavy on Martin’s face—recording, cataloguing—but whatever he is about to say is lost as the kettle begins whistling, initially low but quickly rising in pitch.

“Oh!” Martin scrambles away from the table to remove the kettle from the heat, pouring hot water into the prepared mugs. He turns around, one in each hand, and finds Jon slumped back in his chair, one hand fisted in his hair at the nape of his neck. Martin sets one mug before Jon, keeping the other for himself, tucked close against his chest. “Here we are,” he says, forcibly bright.

Jon drags his mug closer, long fingers hooked around the handle. “Thank you,” he says, wrapping and unwrapping the sodden tea bag string around his forefinger.

“Of course,” Martin says, “I-I mean, they’ll need to steep for a while yet, and we don’t have any milk or sugar or, or honey— _obviously_ we don’t—so it’s just plain, expired tea, but—”

“Martin,” Jon interrupts, _“thank you.”_

“Y-yeah. ‘Course.”

The tea steeps quietly. Jon sits with his eyes closed, cheek propped on a fist, peaceful but not asleep. Martin examines the darkened kitchen: the cracked lino, powder blue tiled backsplash, a dusty, dirty window set above the sink that overlooks the sleeping, undulating moors. Below his fingers, the tabletop is worn smooth, ringed with water stains, dark lacquer thinning in some places. Jon yawns, the sound soft in the half-light. Even though he doesn’t see, Martin smiles at him.

When he was fifteen, Martin wrote his first poem that was purely for himself. It was a lonely time; he’d already been lying about his age on his resumé, so between work and school, he had little time for friends. His mum’s condition deteriorating, the idea of dropping out was already percolating in the back of his mind and he didn’t see much point in socializing. Those late nights, when he finished his shift at the local café and the last of his schoolwork, he would lie in bed, too exhausted to cry, and imagine a life where living didn’t hurt.

One such night, the misery he always carried between his ribs was nearly suffocating. His English class had recently started a poetry section and so Martin, fifteen and aching, found a pencil and a blank piece of paper at the bottom of his book bag, and began to write. It wasn’t good, not by any definition of the term, but Martin can still remember the opening lines. 

_There’ll come a day, when this will all have gone away_ _  
_ _and you and I_ _  
_ _and I and you_ _  
_ _will have our place to stay_

Martin looks around the kitchen once more, then at the man sat across from him. Is it too early to call this their _place?_ Is it too presumptuous to think of Jon as the other half of his _our?_ He knows that everything behind them has not, in fact, _gone away,_ but can’t he hope? Just this once?

Martin draws himself from his navel gazing. It’s too soon, and also too late, to indulge in such thoughts. He checks his mobile instead; the tea has probably steeped long enough. He lifts the tea bag from his mug, giving it a moment to drain, before dropping it on the table. It has enough water stains—one more will hardly stand out. Martin hesitates, then reaches out to do the same to Jon’s, who doesn’t even stir.

“Jon, hey.” Jon hums, peeling his eyes open and struggling upright in his seat. “Hi. Tea should be done.”

“Oh. Lovely.” He goes to remove his tea bag from his mug, pulling up short when he finds it gone. His lips twitch upwards. Martin watches closely as he brings the mug to his lips, then takes a sip. He can see the way Jon sighs into it. “It’s perfect.”

High praise. Hurriedly, Martin tastes his own—it’s dusty and weak, little more than hot water with essence of lemon, a far cry from _perfect._ Jon has… a finicky, exacting palate, prone to leaving his tea unfinished if it doesn't meet his lofty standards, and Martin glances surreptitiously at him to see if he’s feeling ill. But no, he’s still sat there, looking healthy as can be—all things considered—a smile playing around the edges of his lips as he breathes in musty old ginger. Martin barely chokes down another mouthful, then contents himself with wrapping his hands around his warm mug to chase away the lingering, chilled ache in his fingers, staring into the tea’s pale, flavorless depths.

Eventually his mug goes cold and the exhaustion finally starts to hit. Martin gathers himself to pour his unfinished tea down the drain, going to tug Jon’s mug out from his fingers, only to pause when he finds Jon’s gaze already settled upon him, eyes soft, liquid pools of jet. His expression is one of naked adoration—mouth slightly open and lower lip a little wet—and it nearly winds Martin to see such a look aimed at _him._

“Jon?” Martin asks when all he does is stare. “Is something… wrong?”

Jon shakes his head. One of his thin fingers traces slowly around the rim of his empty mug. “Quite the opposite, actually. I’m… I’m glad you’re here, with me.” He breathes deep. Martin feels the air slowly leave his lungs. “I’ve missed you, Martin, and I… I think I’d very much like to kiss you.” That last part is said quietly and shyly, though his eyes never leave Martin’s face.

“Oh,” Martin breathes, feeling like he’s caught in a dream, “yeah, I, I’d like that.”

“Perfect,” Jon says, and then he’s leaning over the table, hand slotting against Martin’s jaw. Their noses bump awkwardly, making Jon huff, and then he’s kissing Martin, soft and dry, and it’s like something deep within him falls into place. The world comes into sudden clarity so Martin shuts his eyes to lose himself in the sensation of Jon’s lips against his own, moving sweetly, undemanding, his warm breath puffing against Martin’s cheek, fingers light along his pulse. It’s everything Martin has ever dreamed of and simultaneously unlike anything he could ever imagine. His fictitious Jon kissed him firmly, filled with fire and impatience. Now he knows that Jon kisses thoroughly, unhurriedly, with a single-minded dedication. He kisses like he reads a statement: falling into it, body and mind. It’s dizzying, to have that care and attention turned onto him.

Martin breaks the kiss because he needs to breathe at some point and laughs, weakly, to himself. “Wow,” is all he can bring himself to say.

Jon seems to agree; he falls back into his chair, a grin splitting his face. It’s wide. Warm. “Yeah,” he pants.

“So you—”

“Yeah. I, I do.”

“Oh. Cool.”

Jon laughs, loud and unabashed and it shouldn’t be nearly as attractive as it is. _“Cool,_ he says. Ridiculous. You have such a way with words; it’s no small wonder you’re a poet.”

“Hey!” Martin protests, “You can’t ask for a poem _literally_ seconds after kissing someone. I need—time! To process!”

“Yes, yes, alright. I expect a three-hundred word report detailing all of my finer qualities on my desk by Monday morning. How’s that?”

“If _I’m_ ridiculous, _you’re_ insufferable,” Martin counters.

“What I _am,_ is tired.” Jon pushes himself back from the table, then offers Martin a hand. “Now can we go to bed?”

Martin considers his hand, worm scarred and calloused and so, _so_ gentle upon his skin, and takes it, using it to lever himself up. “Yeah, okay. Just give me a moment to deal with the mugs.”

“Leave it,” Jon says, tugging lightly, “I want to sleep.” _With you_ is left unspoken, but Martin hears it anyway. He swallows, nods, and allows himself to be led to bed by the hand, lips still tingling.

* * *

They clean. They talk. They kiss.

Jon finds a washboard in the closet and they spend the day washing the sheets and their clothes, salted stiff from the Lonely. Martin stretches a length of industrial duty rope between the gnarled ornamental plum sprouting by the cottage's corner and a spade he jammed deep into the ground. Together, dressed in their pants and a couple of Martin’s old, stretched out shirts, they hang their things up to dry in the gentle breeze.

They talk about meaningless things while they wait; the weather, the painting of wildflowers hung inside, above the kitchen table, their most abhorred chores. Jon confesses he despises dusting and switching out lightbulbs—makes him sneeze something awful and the chances of sticking your hand in some long-abandoned cobweb are far too high for his liking, apparently—while Martin confides his deep, all consuming hatred of folding fitted sheets and that they, more often than not, end up bundled into a wrinkly wad and hidden, shamefully, deep in his airing cupboard.

That evening when the laundry is brought in, it smells of cold, open air. Jon takes it upon himself to fold the fitted sheet, narrating each step as he goes.

* * *

Peace does not sit well with either of them.

Jon paces circuits around the house. Bed, living room, kitchen. Kitchen, living room, bed.

"If you need something to do," Martin says, later, while they're both sat in the living room and he's watching Jon's knee bounce so quick it's nearly a blur, "you could check out the village."

His knee stills and Jon sets down the book he likely wasn't actually reading—somehow he doubts _A Rustlin’ Hay Rollin’_ is Jon’s preferred literature. "I… Would you come with?" He thumbs the frayed, battered corner of the book, its pages rustling softly.

Martin thinks, remembers his… scene at the station, and shudders. "I don't think I'm quite ready for that, yet," he says, "but you can still go. Don't let me stop you."

Jon just shakes his head. "That's alright. I don't mind waiting."

* * *

The first time they walk to the village together, it is not hand in hand. Martin tries to tell himself he doesn’t mind—touch sometimes hurts, after all, even days after the Lonely.

The day is bright and cold, just like the others before it that have passed in disconcerting, nerve-fraying quietude. Above, the sky is washed pale by dawn and the blue of the far-off mountains is a smudged, hazy line across the horizon. The uneven, eroded, pock-marked gravel road stretches out before them, a lazy ribbon of greying brown through the pale heath.

At the end of it, Martin knows, sits the village, hunched and hunkered and hulking like a gargoyle. It shouldn’t be nearly as foreboding as it is.

Jon said he doesn’t mind waiting, that Martin can take as long as he needs, but Jon’s restlessness has only been getting worse and he’s weathered it without complaint for _Martin’s_ sake.

It rankles. He doesn’t like to think about it.

Which is why last night, when he and Jon were bedding down for the evening, Martin casually brought up the sorry state of their sundries. Jon’s confusion melted into quiet delight when Martin suggested, picking at the splintering wood of the nightstand and ignoring the anxious terror that brewed deep in his gut, that they go into the village for supplies the next day. Jon’s bright-eyed, carefully restrained smile had been nearly enough to soothe any of his fears.

It’s a long walk to the village, so they left early, fumbling to get ready in the pre-dawn dark. They didn’t even have breakfast, but Martin can’t quite bring himself to care; his stomach is a twisted mess, anyways, but Jon’s excitement is infectious and oddly calming.

He’s talking about… something, gesticulating expansively, which might be why he’s not holding Martin’s hand. Jon sweeps his arm out in a broad arc, jerkily, animated even for him.

“—The differences are there, if you’re willing to look for them,” Jon is saying, heated, “honestly, it’s really not that difficult. Bog, fen, swamp, marsh, it’s all about the soil pH and the types of plants they can or can’t support—” Ah. The local ecosystem, then. Martin’s heard a surprising lot about it the past few days, little tidbits about the flora and fauna, meandering lectures about the importance of wetlands and how they’re historically threatened by peat cutting and the crawling expansion of agriculture. Most of the jargony bits go straight over Martin’s head—he likes biology well enough, despite never having had much of a mind for the more technical aspects—but it’s nice to just listen to the passion in Jon’s voice when he’s found a topic to really sink his teeth into.

Caught up in Jon’s impromptu tirade, watching him wave at the rolling hills to illustrate a point, wearing one of Martin’s jackets and painted blue and soft and alive, Martin laughs. Just a bit, quietly under his breath, once again disbelieving that he gets to have a chance at, well, _any_ of this.

Jon hears, of course. He promptly shuts right up, mid-sentence, turning to Martin sheepishly. “Sorry, I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

“A bit. That’s okay, though.” He wants to take Jon’s hand, interlock their fingers and swing them between them, but Jon tucks both of his deep into his trouser pockets, almost like an admonishment. Which of them it’s aimed at, Martin couldn’t say. He looks embarrassed, though, so Martin adds, hesitantly, “I don’t mind.”

“Oh?” That causes a small smile to bloom across Jon’s face, like the first rays of morning sun peeking through craggy mountains. It’s lopsided, unsure, and absolutely beautiful.

Martin is so busy staring—charting every laugh line’s crinkle, the shallow dimple on his left cheek, noting the way slashed shrapnel scars connect the worm scars in dot-to-dot constellations—that he does not see the sizable divot in the road that nearly sends him sprawling to the ground. 

As it is, Jon manages to catch Martin’s arm before he can do more than tip precariously to the side, surprisingly well-planted, and haul him back up. Pulled close against Jon’s warm, narrow chest, Martin can see the rippled waves of deep ochre in his eyes. Jon shifts to hold Martin by the shoulders, searching his face intently for any sign of injury; the worried pinch to his lips softens as he deems Martin hale and whole.

“Watch your step,” Jon lightly chides. Martin nods, quickly, sure he’s blushing something fierce.

“Yeah, sorry,” he looks down at their feet. The divot is closer to a pothole and half-filled with muddy sludge; it’s truly impressive that his ankle’s not twisted, even if his shoe is newly caked in muck. “Think I was somewhere else.” Poor choice of words—Jon’s expression immediately becomes alarmed. “Not anything spooky! Just—distracted.”

Jon pulls a face at the s-word. “Well. Do try to be more careful.” The bite is taken out of his words by the way he slides a hand down the sleeve of Martin’s windbreaker to slip it into Martin’s. He tugs on their joined hands as he turns, and Martin grins, broad and bright, the now-unfamiliar expression straining the muscles in his cheeks, not unpleasantly. “I suppose I’ll have to make sure you don’t fall.”

They walk the road and the heat caught between their palms burns like a spring afternoon after the long, cold, dreary winter.

It doesn’t hurt, and some of the icy fear begins to melt.

* * *

The mangoes are a stroke of uncharacteristic good fortune.

Actually, the whole trip was surprisingly fruitful—ha—and now the cupboards, and the fridge, and the freezer are all well stocked. Mainly with nonperishables. Jon insisted on the mangoes, though, bright yellow and a funny oblong shape that’s a far cry from the round, blushed red fruit Martin is familiar with.

They sit in a chipped bowl on the table. It’s a bit of a pathetic sight; the bowl’s print is faded and the two mangoes curled like commas in the bottom of it look small and lonely. One’s a little more battered than the other. But Jon was so excited when he saw them, and he was so proud of his display when he set it down in a grand, sweeping motion, as though it were the sort of bowl of fruit artists could only dream of doing a study.

Maybe, the more he looks at it, there is a certain sort of romance to it.

Regardless, they mock him as he goes throughout the rest of the day, the curiosity of _why_ Jon bought them, _what_ they taste like, and _how_ they found their way to the middle of the Highlands bubbling up in a way that’s almost unbearable, and Martin wonders if this is how Jon feels all the time.

Shopping took far longer than either of them expected and now the sun hangs low in the sky. Jon is, ostensibly, taking a nap on the sofa while Martin goes about making dinner—just a simple, frozen vegetarian lasagna; he hasn’t the energy for anything more involved. The lasagna goes in the oven and Martin dries his hands on a tattered tea towel while he stares out the window above the sink. Gilt in sunset gold, the moorland rolls out in smooth hills, stretching off into the distance. Animalistic specks dot the crest of one hill, too far to make out, but they move with a steady, swaying confidence.

The lasagna will be in the oven for—Martin checks the box—over an hour, so he shuffles into the living room with half a mind to take his own nap. Late as it may be, Martin is thoroughly exhausted by the day’s excitement and his sleep schedule is already beyond fucked up.

Just as he suspected, Jon is draped across the sofa, one leg stretched across the cushions to rest on the sofa’s arm while the other is bent, ninety-degrees, foot planted on the floor. There’s obviously no room for Martin, no matter how he folds himself—he wouldn’t want to risk waking Jon anyways—so he turns to the highly suspect armchair with its odd, ominous stains across the seat.

“Martin,” Jon grumbles from behind him, making him jump. “You don’t want to sit there. Trust me.” Martin whirls around. Jon peers up at him, head pillowed on an arm, clearly quite awake and not sleepy at all; seems his “nap” was an excuse to get out of helping with dinner.

“Well, I don’t see anywhere else to sit,” Martin says, pointedly eyeing Jon’s languid sprawl. Jon sighs and slings his leg onto the floor with a wince, leaving the other half of the sofa for Martin, although his new, twisted up position looks like it’s doing something awful to his back.

“Well?” Martin startles and falls, cross-legged, onto the vacated cushion.

“Thanks,” he murmurs, not entirely sure what to do with the odd, warm feeling spiralling out from the center of his chest. Jon just levels an unimpressed look at Martin, one that says he’s being daft. He’s well acquainted with it, but Jon’s hair is pulled into a half-hearted bun and he’s wearing one of Martin’s jumpers and the quiet rumpledness softens it into something gentler. Martin can’t help but smile at the contrast between Jon-the-dickhead-boss and Jon-the—

Jon-the- _what?_ Partner? Boyfriend? Is that what they are, now? Somehow, Martin can picture the wrinkled nose of disgust at the term _boyfriend._ The man despises the word _spooky,_ for god’s sake.

He’ll stick with Jon for now. Just, just Jon.

Just Jon, who is currently flexing his foot up and down with a faint grimace of displeasure on his face. Up, cringe, down, cringe. Over and over.

“You alright?” Martin asks and Jon blinks over at him.

“Quite.” Up, again, and there’s a tightness to his eyes. “A bit more walking today than I’m used to, is all.” Down, then, but this time Jon holds the position. Oh.

“Is there anything I can get you, or..?”

“I’m fine, Martin. I’m… I’m used to it.”

That’s not nearly as reassuring as Jon probably thinks it is. He remembers, then, how Jon had elevated the trouble leg with the sofa’s arm. “I-if you want, you can…” Martin pats his crossed legs in offering. Jon props himself up and cocks an eyebrow at him, stares for a long moment, then swings his leg up into Martin’s lap. It’s surprisingly heavy.

“Okay?” Jon asks, worriedly. The weight is nice, not as suffocating as a hug can be, when things are bad.

“Yeah. You?”

Jon falls back onto the sofa, hopefully in contentment. “Perfect. How long will dinner take?”

“‘Bout an hour and a half? Actually, I should set an alarm.” Over the past few months, Martin has fallen out of the habit of keeping his phone on him at any given time. He racks his brain, trying to figure out when he last had it, and decides that it must still be in his jacket’s pocket. Which is miles away, hung by the door, and getting up seems like such a lot of work.

“I’ll keep track of time,” Jon says, as though he’s read Martin’s mind, which… no, that’s always been more Elias’ thing. He thinks. “You can sleep, if you like. You look like you need it.” Martin wants to laugh, wants to protest, wants to say he’s done little the past few days _besides_ sleep, but he did come in here with the goal of napping. He just hadn’t thought it’d be alone.

Which is stupid. Jon’s literally _right there._ It just… doesn’t feel right, somehow. Being the only one asleep, when they both obviously need it.

“Mm. I think I’m okay.”

“If you’re sure.” Jon’s voice is dubious, but he doesn’t press.

Martin dozes anyways.

Back when the world was far less scary and most of his worries centered around his CV, paying rent, and his mum’s bills, Martin used his first paycheck as an archival assistant to buy himself a weighted blanket. It was a bit of a splurge, sure, but he figured if he was going to be researching gruesome deaths and pestering people into dredging up their most harrowing memories, he deserved a little comfort. The pressure was fantastic. Grounding. It quieted his mind and helped ease the aching loneliness that rose up when he found himself longing for a gentle touch. Those times he buried himself under its calming weight were some of the most restful nights of his life. 

Until Peter and the capital-L-Loneliness. After him, the blanket felt like a pathetic delusion, one that only served to show him how completely, utterly alone he was. How laughably out of reach human connection was, so unobtainable that he had to resort to artificial, manufactured comfort. He hasn’t used it in almost ten months, now.

Jon’s leg in his lap is a bit like how it used to be. Not nearly as all-encompassing—it’s probably for the best it’s not; that much contact sometimes overwhelms him more than it soothes—but there’s a subtle warmth to it. Sturdy and alive, it anchors him to the cushion, the sofa, the cottage. To here, now. 

So he drifts, the weight across his legs keeping him from going too far from shore, until Jon shifts and gently shakes him awake, murmuring something about the lasagna burning. Martin blinks and rubs at his face, clumsily smudging his fingers over his glasses lenses while Jon leaves to rescue dinner.

The table is set by the time Martin drags himself into the kitchen. Jon bustles over from the cooker with the lasagna clutched in his towel-shrouded hands and drops it down onto a wooden trivet he must’ve unearthed from one of the drawers. The smell of tomato sauce and cheese is heavy in the air. It’s heavenly, and the thought of a hot meal fills Martin with an excitement he’s nearly forgotten.

The lasagna is bland and Martin doesn’t think he’s ever tasted anything better in his life. They eat in a relatively peaceful silence: Martin still tired and groggy from his nap, Jon apparently content to chase stringy bits of spinach around his plate, occasionally glancing up at Martin with a small, twisted smile. Martin has two servings, Jon the one; once they finish, they work together to clear the table, box up the lasagna, and wash the dishes. It’s Jon’s turn to wash, and as he hands Martin a rinsed-clean plate, Martin once again notices the bowl of mangoes, now shoved to the back of the counter, probably to make space on the table for the lasagna.

“What are your plans for the mangoes?” Martin asks while he dries the plate, working slow, concentric circles out from the center that mirror the wreath of faded ivy that decorates its perimeter.

“I thought we could have them for dessert, if that’s alright with you.”

Post-dinner dessert is a luxury Martin rarely indulges in. It sounds nice.

“That sounds nice,” he murmurs and Jon smiles down into the soap filled sink.

They finish the dishes quickly enough and settle back down at the table with the mangoes, a plate, and a paring knife.

Jon holds the knife in one hand, tucked in his curled fingers, the mango in the other, and sets the blade against the fruit. Slowly, gingerly, he draws it down, just below the mango's skin, following its arcing curve. The peel drops onto his plate, two-tone yellow.

"Have you tried a mango, before?" he asks, conversationally, as he repeats the motion. "The proper kind, I mean."

Martin closes his mouth to swallow down his knee-jerk indignation—of _course_ he’s tried a mango, albeit not in recent memory; he hasn’t felt the need to experiment with something he remembers as aggressively mediocre—and considers. "This kind? No, I don't think so." 

Jon hums, sets down the knife and mango. He picks up one of the ribboned peels and holds it out to Martin. "Here." Martin takes it, hesitantly, unsure what he's meant to do with a scrap of mango skin. Jon takes the other bit of peel and sets it so the inside is against his lower teeth, then pulls it neatly along them and out of his mouth. He shows Martin the result, as though it's a trophy: four crisp lines scored in the peel's fleshy underside. "It’s a… thing, I used to do. Give it a go."

Martin looks down at the sticky scrap in his hand. There's hardly any actual fruit on it, but, well…

Martin's attempt is far less smooth than Jon's. The sweetness of the mango is counteracted by the bitter, waxy flavor of the skin. Jon laughs at his disgruntled expression and Martin’s ears burn hot at the rich sound. "Less top teeth next time." He peels off another bit of skin, then holds it out to Martin, thumb braced against the blade's sharp edge. Martin takes it, tries again. This attempt is only marginally better. Jon smiles at him and makes quick work of the mango, no longer pausing to offer the pieces he shaves off.

Martin finds himself transfixed by the steady, confident motion of Jon's hands. How his wrist bends. How he presses the blade into the meat of his thumb to finish severing the peel. Juice slides down his wrist and drips from his fingertips, short nails stained sunny saffron.

Eventually, the mango is peeled, and Jon makes two swift cuts, one down either side of the stone. The knife makes a scratchy, scraping sound as it passes too close to the pit, but slowly the fruit's flesh is whittled away, collecting into a sloppy pile growing under Jon's hands.

_Shck,_ goes the knife, drawn out, methodical. "You're good at this," Martin finds himself saying.

Jon barely pauses. "Hm? Oh, I suppose." He shrugs. "I like mangoes." Clearly. He holds the thing like it's a precious stone, the hand of a lover, a cherished keepsake. He offers Martin a big slice of fruit, one of the original two pieces. "Here, try some."

Martin bites into it slowly, aware of Jon's eyes on him, cataloguing his every reaction. Bright flavor bursts on his tongue, sour and sweet twisting and weaving together, eventually tumbling into a harmonious blend. He hasn’t had a mango—the “proper” kind or otherwise—in years, so he has little to compare it to, but it’s good. _Really_ good.

His delight must show on his face because Jon looks pleased as he picks up the other mango to repeat the entire process.

“I ate a lot of mangoes in uni,” Jon says. Martin snags another peel to try Jon’s trick once more. “Bit of an indulgence, I suppose. It was a ritual of sorts, one that started when I was a child. I’d submit a paper, finish a term, and reward myself with a mango. I’d buy half a dozen around the holidays, hole myself up in my flat, and work through them as a present to myself. I got Georgie in on it, once, to celebrate one of our anniversaries. She loved it—” he laughs, short and distant, “—her teeth were stained all yellow.”

Martin tongues the peel hanging out of his mouth, enthralled. Jon’s gaze is hazy, lost to his memories, mouth a fond half-smile. The sting of jealousy is muted by the sight of him, wispy curls escaping his hair tie and falling down his neck, jumper sleeves pushed up to reveal his slender forearms, silvery scars scattered like lunar craters. Jon bites his lip, breathes deep.

“I… I don’t remember much of my mother, but…” he says softly, mango falling apart under his careful ministrations, “I do remember this. Her hands, cutting up raw mangoes for pickle, or peeling them ripe for lassi, or, or chutney, her hands giving me the peel to suck on, then the pit. The memories are so clear, but it could have only happened a few times. My birthday, maybe."

Martin doesn't quite know what to do with that information—they haven't talked much about their parents, or growing up, or anything that isn't tangentially work related. Too painful, perhaps. Too scary, to be that vulnerable with someone. He realizes, all at once and with great fervor, that he'd like to share in that vulnerability with Jon. "My mum used to peel oranges, for me," Martin offers, then stuffs another piece of mango skin in his mouth.

She'd been so much softer, then. Laugh lines and dark hair dyed coppery and roughened hands that would take oranges from a young Martin's struggling grasp and open the fruit for him, quick and practiced. Her neat-cut nails would dig into the skin, releasing tiny sprays of citrusy oil as it unfolded in a single, spiraling curl. She'd give Martin back three-quarters of the orange, keeping some for herself as a _mum tax,_ laughing at his small, disgruntled expression.

Then his dad left and she grew bitter and everything between them went all wrong. Rotten.

_Too much,_ he thinks, and tells himself he's not going to cry, that he's had time to mourn and he's over it, he really is, and drags the peel out of his mouth, too hard. His teeth catch on it, and it tears, and he shoves himself back from the table to dump the whole mess in the bin.

Martin pauses by the counter to breathe and get himself back under control. _This is supposed to be something nice,_ he reminds himself, _don't muck it up._

When he sits back at the table, Jon is watching him, steadily, dark eyes sad. "Alright?" he asks, terribly gentle.

"Yeah," Martin says, wringing out a smile, "I'm just… not very good at this." He leaves _this_ up for interpretation.

"That's alright," Jon says. In his hand, the knife slices away the last peel from the second mango, and he holds it out to Martin. "You'll get better. Practice, right?"

Martin takes it. "Practice," he agrees. This time, he doesn't tear the peel, nor does the bitter taste of the skin fill his mouth. Pleased, he grins at Jon, who smiles right back. He's always been a quick study.

* * *

It’s afternoon when Martin goes to put the kettle on and finds a rock set on the corner of the kitchen table. Smooth to the touch, one side is worn completely flat. It’s a pretty, pearly off-white, and the cracks where dirt has collected give it a slightly marbled appearance, shot through with rich loamy brown.

“Jon?” Martin calls, bemused as he turns it over in his hand. There’s a nice, solid heft to it. “What’s this?”

“What’s what?” His voice comes from deeper in the cottage—the bedroom, maybe, or relaxing in the bath after his walk. It doesn’t matter; it’s such a small space that both their voices carry easily.

“There’s a rock? On the table?”

A long pause. “Found it in the road. It… made me think of you.”

“Huh,” Martin says to himself. He doesn’t know if he should be pleased or offended that Jon saw a piece of the road and thought _Martin._ People drive and step all over it, after all.

Martin takes it to the sink and begins to scrub off the dirt. He’ll be pleased, he decides, because it’s nice to be thought of at all.

* * *

There was a time that Martin gladly rose with the sun, having somehow romanticized the idea of waking with the earth itself to get him through the arduous ordeal of an early morning shift at his latest ill-fated job. Now his relationship with sleep is strained enough that he’ll take whatever he can get, whenever he can get it, and the sun, like a childhood friend turned passive aggressive enemy, thwarts him at nearly every turn.

There is a vicious sort of glee to the weak, early morning sunlight that slips through the slats in the blinds and knifes its cruel way across Martin’s closed eyes. He groans discontentedly and rolls onto his side to hide from the baleful light, burying his face into something warm and soft. Something that groans right back, equally disgruntled at being awoken.

The something shifts and Martin tightens his grip on it, reluctant to let go of even a modicum of comfort. “Morning,” the thing—no, _Jon—_ yawns, hand settling on the back of Martin’s skull.

“Shut up,” Martin grunts, fist twisting in the side of Jon’s shirt.

Jon laughs at him, quietly, but does as he’s asked and shuts up. He stretches briefly, elbows and knuckles cracking softly in the quiet, then begins massaging Martin’s scalp, fingers kneading up and down his neck, delving into the back of his shirt collar to rub out a knot off to the left of his spine. It’s stupidly nice and Martin melts further into Jon’s side, tossing a leg over him in contentment as his eyes drift shut. Sleep rises, crests, and reclaims him.

When he wakes again, he’s flat on his back, the light is far weaker, and the sound of rain drums on the windowpane. Martin blinks up at the ceiling, an odd sort of tiredness clinging to him, telling him he’s overslept. Plastered against his side and draped halfway across his chest is Jon; with their positions reversed, Martin is free to admire his slack, sleeping face. The shadows below his eyes are as bad as ever, giving each socket a hollowed out, ghoulish look, yet his brow is relaxed as he breathes easily against Martin. Several strands of hair are caught in his open mouth and an old, dried line of drool streaks its way down his chin, but Martin’s shirt is blessedly dry.

There’s a novelty to waking up to another person in his bed, one that Martin hopes he never tires of. To find himself sharing in someone else’s space from the moment he opens his eyes is heady; little could do more to convince him how _not alone_ he is. It’s the sort of thing he’s dreamt of since he was a lonely, gay, touch-starved teen, but never did he dare to think he could actually _have_ it.

Martin tugs the blankets back up from where they’ve been kicked aside by his and Jon’s combined restless sleep. There’s a bite to the air from the rain; the cold makes Jon’s joints go creaky, his scars all achy, and he’s always gotten chilly easily. It’s a problem that’s only exacerbated by Martin’s now perpetually cool extremities. 

He used to run hot, a wool wrapped furnace; it was something he was oddly proud of, that he could be a source of warmth and comfort to those around him. He doesn’t anymore—yet another thing stolen by the Lonely, another thing to further isolate him from the world. When those around you continually flinch away from the slightest touch of a discomfitingly icy and clammy hand, you stop reaching out after a while.

Jon, however, doesn’t seem to mind—when Martin mentioned how unpleasant it must be for him, he merely muttered something about _bad circulation_ and _matching._ Now Martin knows he’ll lean into any soft touch.

Slowly, so as to not wake Jon, Martin loops an arm around his narrow shoulders to card gently through his hair, carefully disentangling it. Jon mumbles something, nuzzles further into Martin’s chest, then settles, evidently deeply asleep.

It’s a rare thing, for Jon to look peaceful in his sleep. Martin doesn’t quite know how the dream stuff works, but he thinks that Jon sleeps better at odd hours, when statement givers aren’t dreaming too. It must be terribly late in the morning, because Jon is still and heavy atop Martin’s chest, warm limbs loosely clinging, and he does not stir as Martin brushes his hair back from his face. How lucky he is, to be privy to such an unusual sight.

Martin lazes in bed for a while longer, but even he is not immune to the drudgery of boredom. He shifts below Jon slightly, starting by stretching out his legs, rotating his ankles so they pop dully under the blankets after hours of disuse, then flexes his fingers.

Jon slumbers on.

Eventually, Martin nudges gently at his shoulder, trying to coax him off without waking him. It has the opposite effect: Jon clings tighter even as his face scrunches up. Begrudgingly awake, then.

“Hey,” Martin says, patting Jon in the center of his back, “let me up?”

Eyes still shut, Jon says, petulant and rough, “No.”

Martin pats him again, a tad firmer. “Please?”

“No.” Jon burrows closer to Martin, bony arms wrapping around him, uncomfortably digging between his back and the mattress. “You’re warm.”

That pulls Martin up short. “Am I?”

Jon pauses too, apparently considering. “You are.” He sounds faintly surprised. “Oh, you…” He tangles their legs, pressing his cold toes against Martin’s ankle, who stifles an undignified yelp. “I’m never letting you up.”

Honestly, spending an eternity wrapped up in bed with Jon sounds delightful. Still, he feels restless after so long spent idle, so he resigns himself to fighting dirty. “Not even to make breakfast?”

“No.” To illustrate his point, Jon presses impossibly closer, tucking his face up against Martin’s neck and fitting his palm to the curve of Martin’s side, below his shirt. He can feel when Jon blinks blearily against him, every slow movement of his lashes sending shivery ripples down his spine, breath gusting hot across his collar bone. Martin doesn’t even think to be nervous of the ramifications of such intimacy.

“I’ll make pancakes,” Martin goads, “those fluffy American ones you like. Might even add blueberries.”

Jon, sugar fiend that he is, hesitates, and in that moment Martin knows he's won. “... Ten more minutes," he capitulates.

“Ten more minutes,” Martin agrees and entertains himself with scratching long, lazy arcs across Jon’s back. Jon hums in drowsy delight, slipping back towards sleep.

Martin lets him.

* * *

"I'm going out," Martin calls into the cabin, bent at the waist to tug his boots on. Outside, the wind rustles through the bushes, causing them to drag their barren, clawed arms against the windows, grating like nails across a chalkboard. _Skreee,_ they scream, agonized, and Martin shivers reflexively.

The clattering from the kitchen stops and Jon appears, drying his hands on the thighs of his trousers. A wet, slightly sudsy spot stretches across his belly—doing the dishes from lunch, then. "Where are you off to?" he asks, stepping closer to peer out the window.

"The village," Martin grunts as he finishes tying his laces. He straightens, leans over to peek out, too. Thin clouds race across the sky, caught in the blustering wind. "Nearly out of tea, you know."

"What a tragedy," Jon says flatly, although there's a curve to his lips. "Didn't we _just_ restock?"

"... Maybe, but—What _else_ am I supposed to do with myself? It’s not like we have much on, at the moment." He doesn't mention that last time they were in town, he overheard the middle-aged man that runs the secondhand shop talking to one of his customers. Doesn’t mention that the man said something about a donation of several boxes of junk from the village’s resident crone. Doesn’t mention that the vague details he got of the woman—crotchety, a propensity for knitwear, an inordinate fondness of cats—reminded him of Jon. Doesn’t mention that today, anything worthwhile will be set out and that Martin would like to do something nice for his partner, who's a ninety-three year-old grandmother in the body of a thirty-one year-old man.

"Yes, fine, you're right." Jon searches Martin's face. "Should I—Do you want…?" He inclines his head towards the door.

"Oh! No, no, I should be fine. Let you have some quiet without me here to chat your ear off."

"Right." Jon licks his lips, looks down at his fidgeting hands in blatant disappointment. Martin bites the inside of his lip. He feels terribly guilty but—it's already so _hard_ to surprise Jon. "Well. I'll… I’ll be here, then."

"I'll be fast, I promise," Martin says, turning away from Jon's barely contained sulk— _You! He wants to spend time with you!_ a part of him thrills—to snag his jacket from its place by the door. Jon's borrowed coat and scarf hang next to it, and Martin can't help the affection that bubbles up at the sight. "An hour and a half, tops." He pats down all his pockets, then glances around their small entryway; the nail where they’re supposed to keep the key is vacant. “Key?”

"Okay." Jon follows Martin over to the door, his expression a bit lost as he fishes the key out from his trouser pocket to hand over. "And you're _certain_ you'll be alright?"

"Positive. Relax, Jon. I'll be fine, okay?" His worry is understandable, of course; aside from a few short, individual walks, they haven't spent much time out of each other's company, and the thought of engaging with other people still fills Martin with an odd sort of terror, even with Jon there to act as a buffer. He beats down the brewing apprehension—he has plans to visit only the one shop and speak with its owner in a purely transactional manner. It’ll be fine.

The door squeaks as it's wrenched open. They should get that fixed, probably, but Martin likes the overbearing _loudness_ of it, the shrill sound that announces an arrival or departure. It’s jarring and pleasantly noisy.

"No, I know, I just—" Jon forcefully cuts himself off with a sigh as Martin steps outside, lingering in the doorway. "Hour and a half. I'll hold you to that."

Martin levels his brightest, most reassuring smile at him. “You’d better.” With that, he turns and walks down the path, following its serpentine curve through the garden and out the gate.

He’s just had time to latch the rusted gate behind himself when he hears the call of, “Martin! Wait!” With a fond, world weary sigh, Martin shakes his head, exasperated, and turns back to the cottage. At this rate, he’ll never get to leave.

Jon is running down the path towards him, bare feet slapping loudly on the paving stones, something bundled up in his hands. He does an odd, short little skip over a crack that bisects one of the stones before coming to a breathless stop before Martin, the gate a flimsy barrier between them. The bitter wind sweeps over them both, coaxing fine strands of hair out from Jon’s braid and biting at Martin’s already chapped cheeks.

“What now?” Martin asks patiently. 

Jon squints, looks him up and down, then beckons him closer. “Come here,” he demands. Indulgent, Martin rests his forearms on the gate, weight settled on his back foot, so he has to tilt his head slightly to look up at Jon. Typically, they’re nearly the same height, with Martin an inch or two taller, and the new angle is novel. “It’s cold out.” As if to explain, Jon holds up the bundle of soft, shimmering blue fabric clutched in his fists—his scarf. He leans forward and begins to carefully loop it around Martin’s neck himself, instead of just handing the thing over. It’s such a ridiculously sweet and domestic gesture that—just for a moment—Martin merely stands, dumbfounded, until Jon makes a quiet noise of frustration that snaps him back to reality. Martin stoops a bit more to help the process, ducking his head to hide the blush crawling over his cheeks. After a few moments of fiddling with how it drapes, Jon pulls back, smoothing a hand down the front of Martin’s jacket. “There you are.”

Martin tucks his nose into the depths of the scarf and breathes deep. It smells like Jon. Which shouldn’t be surprising, not really, but the scent of his shampoo—honey and almonds—mixed with musty disuse is nearly overwhelming in the comfort it offers. “Thanks,” Martin mumbles into the fabric, suddenly shy.

Jon just smiles and tucks the edges of the scarf below Martin’s chin so he’s no longer hiding. “Just bring it back to me,” he says, then leans close again to kiss Martin, soundly on the lips. Martin sighs into it, hands unfolding, one latching loosely onto Jon’s bicep, the other on the side of his ribs to tug him flush against the gate. Feather light, Jon strokes Martin’s jaw with the tips of his slightly pruney fingers, just once, before he pulls away. “Be safe, okay?”

“Always am.”

Jon pats Martin’s cheek, then gently shoves at his chest to get him to straighten and turn around. “Categorically untrue, but go.”

Martin rolls his eyes, but does as he’s told, and goes. The scarf’s loosely braided tassels are silky as he twines them between his fingers.

“Get chocolate, if you see any in the shop!” Jon calls and Martin responds with an airy, noncommittal wave, his smile once again hidden by soft, pearlescent blue.

* * *

Martin finds two things at the consignment store that he cannot bear to leave behind: a painting of the idea of a cat and a set of small, ancient wind chimes, the paddle delicately etched with twining morning glories.

The painting is small and clearly done by an inexpert hand; it’s about the size of a postcard, with heavy brushstrokes that trail globs of paint—making for an interesting texture, at least. The cat-ish shape is a lumpy, long furred haze of violent, nearly neon orange that glowers out at the world with malcontented green eyes, disdain quite apparent in its slit pupiled stare. There is a smudge of white across its upper lip that _could_ be a mistake but regardless looks like half of a moustache.

Martin’s never met the Admiral, but from Jon’s tales of his antics, he’s always imagined him as a big, ginger tom. He thinks— _hopes—_ Jon will get a kick out of it, one way or another.

He also stops by the grocer, even though he hadn’t originally planned on it.

The shop is fresh out of chocolate bars, though, so he settles for the next best thing: a package of mini, semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Jon’s delight over the painting is a tangible thing as he sets it in a place of pride upon the mantel top. Then he laughs long, and hard, at Martin’s humble chocolate offering.

He snatches the package out of Martin’s hands when he huffs, though, then dances out of reach and refuses to share, popping the chips into his mouth in cheeky handfuls. His tongue is stained dark and bitter when Martin manages to corner him in the kitchen and kiss him, the taste of chocolate even more rich when it comes straight from his mouth.

* * *

There isn’t much to do in the safe house—Daisy keeps her paltry selection of bad, steamy western romance novels sequestered away in the bedside table and a jigsaw puzzle hidden amongst the linens—but they find ways to keep busy.

“M—Ah!—Martin,” Jon says, panting, his hands tight fists on the back of Martin’s jumper. Martin hums and scrapes his teeth against Jon’s skin, right against where his pulse thrums thready and butterfly quick below his jaw. Against his lips, Jon’s throat works. “Ah, M-Martin, I need you to—k-know that I, I don’t—I just—” Martin jerks back at that, worried. With Jon’s ankles locked together behind his back, he can’t go far. “Don’t,” Jon finishes, lamely.

Martin’s heart beats fast in his throat in a decidedly unpleasant fashion. “Don’t what, Jon? What’s wrong? Did I… do something?”

“No! No,” Jon cups Martin’s cheeks hurriedly, thumbs sweeping over his orbital bones, “no, you’re fine, it’s—I, ah, I don’t _do_ this.”

“O-okay,” Martin says slowly, not entirely understanding, glancing down at where Jon’s perched on the counter, legs wrapped tight around Martin’s hips. He rather thought they _were_ doing this, whatever _this_ is. Jon flushes, and it’s _very_ pretty, but now is, apparently, not the time for such thoughts.

“No, I meant… The kissing is, is _fine.”_

“Fine,” Martin flatly repeats.

“Not like—” Jon groans and drops his head to Martin’s shoulder. “It’s more than fine. Good, even.” _Good,_ Martin mouths, wondering what in god’s name is going on. “I don’t… Sex. It’s not… It’s not my thing.”

Oh. _That's_ what this is. “Okay.” Martin rubs his thumbs along Jon’s flanks, below the hem of his shirt and just above the waistline of his trousers. This time it’s Jon who pulls back.

_“Okay?”_ he parrots, incredulous, “Martin, it’s highly unlikely that you and I will ever…” Clearly floundering, unwilling to actually _say_ it, he trails off meaningfully.

“Fuck,” Martin supplies, helpfully, and grins at the way Jon sputters, blushing even further. “I get it Jon, and I’m fine with it.” He then sobers, moving his hands from Jon’s hips to brace them on the countertop. “Is this too far, then?”

“No,” Jon says, again, “this is… nice.” Christ, it’s like every word is a tooth being pulled. He sees whatever must be happening on Martin’s face, because he rushes to correct, “Again, more than nice. I’m not good, a-at talking about any of this. I like… this, with you. It’s—” he waves, in a vague manner that’s decidedly unhelpful, “—that, I’m not… interested in.”

“So sloppy make-outs are okay,” Martin clarifies. Jon grimaces at the wording, but nods. “Okay, and... below the belt is a no?” Again Jon nods, cheeks positively glowing with their ruddy blush. “Got it. It’s… Jon, that’s pretty straightforward stuff.”

Jon huffs, his legs finally unhooking from around Martin. His socked heels hit the cupboards behind them with a dull _thunk._ “I don’t think—Some people would be more bothered, Martin.”

“Good thing I’m not _some people,_ then.” Still, he hesitates before taking a small step back, unsure if Jon releasing him was a sign he wanted space. “And for the record, I’m not bothered. At all.”

“Why not?” Jon asks, and there’s nothing in his voice but simple curiosity.

Martin blows out a breath. “I don’t really care about that stuff, either? Like, if you were into it, I would be, too, but since you’re not…” He shrugs. “Mostly I like the intimacy, I guess." That's the crux of it; always has been. _Intimacy._ Sex is frequently something that scares him much as it excites him—far too many moving parts and angles and techniques to take into consideration, so much pressure to meet some standard he isn't exactly certain of—but there's something within him that longs for someone to see the shivery-pale parts of him that he hides from the world and _not turn away._ "It's… sharing something and making someone else feel good. But I also like sleeping together, and brushing your hair, and having your toothbrush next to mine in our cup on the sink. Sex can be fun and all, I don’t exactly need it to feel fulfilled in a relationship. If… if that makes sense?”

“It does,” Jon murmurs and he reaches out to snag Martin by the sleeves of his jumper, drawing him back in. His ankles hook around the backs of Martin’s knees, gently holding him in place. “I’m… Sex as a form of intimacy is something I understand, intellectually. Chemicals, endorphins, bond building, et cetera. However, I-I find that there are other ways to be intimate that appeal to me far more.”

“... Such as?”

Jon groans. “I don’t—I don’t enjoy talking about it.”

“Well, tough, because unlike you, I can’t just Know what it is you like or want.” To illustrate his point, Martin pokes the center of Jon’s forehead with a finger. Jon plays along and sways easily from the light prod, casting his eyes to the ceiling in thought.

“Fair, I suppose.” He purses his lips, then blows out a breath through them, looking for all the world like a put-upon fish. “I-I also like sleeping, or napping, or dozing with you.”

“We _do_ sleep a lot, don’t we?”

“Exhausted, the two of us,” Jon agrees. “I like—when you touch me. It… I haven’t had much of it, in recent years.” He’s still blushing but when he laughs, it’s dry and brittle, like last season’s twigs underfoot. “Or at all, really.”

“Jon…” Martin takes his hands in his own, squeezing them lightly. Jon squeezes back, harder.

“Sorry, I… Can we be done for now? I’m not exactly certain what I want, o-or how to articulate it.”

“Yeah, ‘course, but... you know we’ll come back to this, right? It’s not really something that can go unsaid, and it’s not fair to either of us to drop it.”

“Yes, I know, I just need—time.”

“Okay, as much as you need.” Martin leans in, then hesitates. “Can I kiss you?”

Jon rolls his eyes. “Yes, Martin, you don’t—”

“Doesn’t hurt to check,” Martin sing-songs, then dives in to kiss him on the cheek. “What if we did that—talk as we go? As things come up?”

“Huh. That actually… That actually sounds reasonable.”

“‘Course it does. All my plans sound reasonable.”

Jon just smiles, in a way that feels indulgent and slightly condescending before it drops. “You’re really alright with this? It… _I_ can be,” he puffs out his cheeks, reluctant to continue but forging on anyway, “capricious, which might be annoying, for you.”

“Jon,” Martin starts, a tad too heated, then cuts himself off and takes a few steadying breaths. “Consent is never _capricious,_ okay, it’s something you ask for over and over again because you’re allowed to change your mind. As for getting annoyed—that’s why we talk about things, so we know where our boundaries are and so we don’t get frustrated when we keep, I don’t know, _missing_ each other. This isn’t, like, something I’ll get _peeved_ about, or whatever. Okay?”

Jon looks stunned, eyes round and wide, lower lip caught between his teeth, and then he laughs in quiet disbelief. “I—I’m—You’ve no idea how relieved I am to hear that.”

“Oh?”

“Oh,” he confirms. “I’ve been, well—not necessarily _worried_ about this, but—”

“You’ve thought about it?”

“Mm.”

“W-which part? Us heatedly kissing? Or discussing boundaries?”

Suddenly, Jon is terribly interested in fiddling with the cuffs of Martin’s jumper, rolling them up to expose his freckled wrists. “Mm… hm.”

Both, then. “At... great length,” Martin hazards.

“... Mm.”

Martin stares at the wall mounted cupboard just behind Jon’s head while that all sinks in. Then, as the implications settle as silt in water, delight surfaces, “S-sorry, I don’t mean to detract from the moment, but Jon, exactly how _long_ have you been thinking about this?”

Pained, Jon groans, _“Martin.”_

“Sorry! Sorry, just curious.” He watches Jon avoid watching him back, fingers so light they’re nearly ticklish against the insides of his wrists. “So we’re okay?” Jon finally glances up, wetting his kiss-swollen lips, and Martin amends, _“You’re_ okay?”

And _there’s_ a smile, small and embarrassed though it may be. “Yes, Martin, we’re, we’re perfect.”

“Good. And, um, you’ll let me know if there’s anything you don’t… If I do something… Just, talk to me? Whatever you want to give me, that’s more than enough.”

Jon breathes in, and in the quiet stillness that suffuses the cabin, it’s nearly deafening. “I will, Martin,” he promises, and hesitates for the barest of moments before squeezing Martin’s wrists, adding, “and you’ll tell me, too?”

“Of course. It’s a two-way street we’re on, after all.” Jon sighs, fondly, and Martin continues right over it, “D’you… wanna pick up where we left off? I feel like the moment’s passed, a bit.”

“A bit. We could—nap? Since that’s evidently something we’re both agreed on.”

Martin’s not tired in any way that's productive. He doesn’t think Jon is, either. He can’t imagine Jon saying the word _snuggle,_ not in that dry and academic and distasteful tone of his, but the closeness of a good cuddle after a talk like this sounds lovely.

“I could go for a lie-down,” Martin says, and Jon sways forward, bumps his forehead against Martin’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, arms wrapping around Martin, hands slipping into his trousers’ back pockets in a loose embrace.

* * *

Ever since he found the jigsaw puzzle hidden between two sets of sheets, Martin has been itching to pry it open. The box is a garish swirl of yellowed green dotted with cows and lambs and farmers locked in some sort of pastoral scene. It’s hideous and only five hundred pieces and he can’t stop thinking about it.

He caves and declares it jigsaw night and Jon breaks out their one bottle of cheap white wine, claiming it will be the only thing to get him through the evening.

“If it’s _such_ a burden on you,” Martin says loudly, rolling his eyes as he pulls out two mugs, “you don’t have to participate. You _could_ just read, or something.”

“No, no,” Jon sighs from the living room, dumping the faded box on the coffee table, “even though I don't see how a mysterious, unfamiliar, _already open_ jigsaw can end in anything but tragedy, I’ll still help.”

“How chivalrous.” Martin closes the cupboard and comes into the room, rounding the table to set the mugs down across from Jon. “I’d have thought you’d be into jigsaws, if I’m honest. Organizing things just how you like them, putting everything in its proper place, piecing things together, all that stuff that made you such a great head archivist.”

“I did enough with my grandmother to last me a lifetime.” Jon fills both mugs with a generous helping of wine. Martin settles down on the floor and opens the box, upending the pieces onto the table, then begins flipping them over, pulling out any edges he comes across. “Besides, when did I ever seem to truly enjoy organizing the Archive?”

“Okay, fair,” Martin concedes, remembering how the last day he’d ever seen Jon _not_ looking harried was the day before his promotion, “you did always seem rather…” ornery, cantankerous, irascible, waspish, “frazzled.”

Jon hums, folding himself down on the sofa across from Martin. He joins in sorting the pieces, thin fingers plucking one up to squint at whatever is pictured on it. “I have… a piece with a googly-eyed bastard on it.” He sets it down, separate from the others, like it’s of great importance, the key to sorting out the looming mass of paperboard between them, even though it’s not an edge. “I take issue with _frazzled_ as a descriptor, though. ‘Massive, obsessive, unpleasant prick’ would be more apt. But yes. I find it difficult to stay organized, especially when I’m overwhelmed.” He says it calmly, like this doesn’t call to mind the soaring towers of paperwork that teetered in his office, the piles of books interlocked one upon another, the cover of one marking some random place in another, the pens scattered on every flat surface but never kept in their glass jar on his desk.

Martin snorts. “Well, at least a jigsaw is _designed_ to be organized and finished.”

“And that makes them slightly more tolerable.” Jon drinks deeply from his mug, eyes alight with good humor, then sets it down with a clatter. _“Slightly.”_

“Fine, fine. I respect your right to have opinions, even if they happen to be completely, unequivocally wrong. Jigsaws are fun.”

“In what way is _this,”_ Jon flips over a piece with a deliberate _clack,_ then pushes it, slowly, to the side, all while maintaining direct, unnerving eye contact, “fun?”

That makes him flounder a bit and blurt out, “I don’t know! It’s like me asking you why, why reading old, stuffy textbooks is fun. Don’t give me that look, it’s _boring,_ and you know it.” Jon scoffs. Martin looks down at the table with its messy array of dusty pieces.

There are, of course, the obvious and boring answers: it’s something mindless to keep your hands busy with, quiet so as to avoid annoying your mum, and perfectly doable as a solo project. If you’re on your own in your flat, you put on some music and order some take-out and suddenly, what would have been a quietly depressing evening alone turns into a party for one. It helps that you can buy them used from a consignment store for anywhere between fifty pence and two quid—as long as you don’t mind the possibility of missing pieces, which Martin doesn’t, in fact he rather thinks of it as a sort of _hard mode—_ and then you have something that can keep you busy, over and over again, for years to come. It’s… sort of like an investment.

“I like putting things back together,” he settles on. “You have a mess, but you know it could be something beautiful—” he waves his hands at the pile and Jon’s little bastard piece and the box that showcases an idyll filled with bug-eyed gawkers, “—so you look at the pieces and see where they do and don’t fit. You’ve got to see the forest _and_ the trees, find the similarities and the differences. Each one has a clue to where it goes as long as you’re looking for it and after that it’s just a matter of patience and dedication.”

“Which you have in droves.” Jon leans his chin in his open palm, a fond almost-smile softening his lips. Martin flushes and snags an edge, pressing its rounded corners into the meat of his thumb. “Makes sense, I suppose.”

“Oh? Does that mean I’ve converted you? Shown you the light?”

“Christ, no.” Martin glares at him and Jon grins, already a bit looser from the wine, teeth round and gums pink and cheeks flushed rosy and warm. Of course he’d be a lightweight. It’s unfair, how that makes Martin’s heart twinge in his chest. “That’s a very… Martin perspective to have. Very romantic.”

“There’s nothing wrong with a little romance,” Martin snips back, swinging his glare to rest on the swathes of meaningless greens and yellows.

“Didn’t say there was. My grandmother… She tried everything she could think of to keep me sat in one place. She was fond of jigsaws, too, so that particular method lasted far longer than any of her other attempts, even if it was demonstrably less successful. I always thought it was terribly boring and would have much rather been out exploring.”

The image of Jon—decades younger and still so serious—meandering the twists and turns of his childhood neighborhood makes Martin smile all too easily. “Ambulatory kid, huh?”

“To put it mildly. You know, my grandmother threatened to ground me if I didn’t stop wandering off.”

Martin waits for him to shrug it off as a joke and gasps when Jon just quirks an amused eyebrow at him. “Wait, what, _seriously?!_ How old were you?”

“Hm. Bit less than eight?” Martin continues to gape. That’s… very young. “What? She was old and I was bored, what else was I supposed to do with myself?” Jon says, a touch defensive. He looks like he’s beginning to regret revealing such things to Martin, shoulders hunching up as he sorts pieces by color with a dogged determination. Edges are mixed in with everything else, and Martin can picture a young Jon deliberately sabotaging his nan so she might wave him off out of pure frustration, then that same Jon disappearing for hours on end, driving her mad with worry. 

Martin can relate.

Trying not to smile, Martin shakes his head.

“What?” Jon demands, blush darkening, which only serves to make Martin grin at him.

“Sorry, sorry, it’s just—You hold yourself so seriously, but—you’ve always been a bit of a handful, haven’t you?”

Jon pauses, then scoffs, ever so quietly. “It would seem so.”

“So is that the type of kid you were, then? Precocious?”

“Aggravating,” Jon counters.

Martin rolls his eyes. _“Aggravating?_ C’mon, Jon, _every_ kid is annoying in their own way. It’s kind of a hallmark of being a child.”

“Fine. Yes, precocious. Also insolent, restless, deliberately pedantic, difficult,” he easily ticks them off on his fingers in seamless rapid-fire, “unsociable, just—Take how I am as an adult and give all those qualities to an eight year-old and _that’s_ what I was like, except slightly more endearing because I didn’t _know_ any better.” He looks up and grimaces at Martin’s frown, then knocks back more of his drink, faintly embarrassed by his outburst. “Sorry. Bringing a bit of a… bit of a weird mood to the table. That’s, ah, e-enough about me. What sort of child were _you,_ Martin?”

As far as subject changes go, it’s clumsy and awkward and very, _very_ Jon, but Martin doesn’t fight it. 

“Oh, um.” By now, they’ve finished flipping over each piece and Martin has most of the edges collected into a neat pile between his elbows. He spreads them out, connects one to a corner, then another as he tries to think of what to say. “I was—aggravating,” he settles on, mouth curling into a sly smile.

It gets the desired response. _“Martin,”_ Jon groans, reproachful.

“See? Not helpful, is it?” Still, he hesitates again, blowing out a breath before saying, “I was… energetic, I guess? Loud. I liked to talk, like, a _lot._ The world was so big and full and exciting and, and _beautiful_ that I would get too wrapped up in admiring everything around me that I’d end up missing dinner.” He smiles, tries not to let it waver. “Um, what else… Oh! I was actually—I _hated_ spiders.”

Jon straightens out of his relaxed slump at that, chin tucked back in disbelief, like he can’t imagine a world where Martin doesn’t love spiders. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Martin smiles up at Jon, who gapes down at him. For all the ways they intimately know each other, it’s odd—yet nice—to be able to surprise Jon with something so trivial.

“Why?” Jon asks, the one syllable so steeped in dumbfounded curiosity that it practically drips compulsion, except there’s no tell-tale feeling of static, or deep-seated, awful urge to spill his darkest secrets, or whatever it is that forces people to answer Jon’s questions.

“I didn’t like the way they moved.” It’s as simple as that. Had he been older, perhaps he would’ve hated how spiders trap their prey, all tangled up in sticky lines where their struggling attempts to escape do nothing but further ensnare them, but as it is, “They’re quick and small, so each scuttling movement looks jerky, like rough animation or, or a flickering film reel. If you take your eyes off them to so much as blink they might be gone when you open—”

“Yes, I rather get the point,” Jon says, hurriedly. Martin looks at him in concern. His mouth is downturned in disgust and he gives a small, involuntary shudder.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. I asked.” Jon chews on his lip while Martin takes his first sip of wine. It’s bitter and by no means good, but he’s never been much of a fan of alcohol. It tends to make him weepy and morose when he drinks alone, and he’s never really had enough of a social life to bother with acclimating to the taste. He puts together a bit more of the jigsaw’s bottom edge before Jon, hesitant and clearly at war with himself, asks, “What changed?”

“You don’t have to ask,” Martin says, gently, because he knows Jon hates spiders; he made it abundantly clear in every scoff when Martin tried to explain their cool adaptations and importance to the ecosystem, in every critical, wary glare he leveled at Martin when he saved a spider from a shoe or book or rolled up statement. Martin has long accepted that it’s something they’ll never agree on—especially when he realized that Jon’s dislike verges more on phobia. He still feels immensely guilty for all the times he’s nattered away, rhapsodizing about his arachnid friends.

Jon exhales, then picking each word carefully, like one might examine fruit for signs of rot or worms, he says, “No, I… I’d like to know.”

“Oh. Well. If you’re sure.” Martin licks his lips and breathes deep, slotting another edge into place as he gathers himself. “It was in primary school, I think, early autumn? When the world gets golden and sharp and sometimes there’s frost on the grass in the morning. I was waiting in the hall for class to start when some of the other kids near me started screaming, like, ‘Aaaah! Gross! Kill it!’ Or, something like that. Obviously, I had to see what all the fuss was, and there was a spider, all hunkered down in the corner where the floor and wall meet. It wasn’t even particularly big. Poor thing must’ve come in from the cold, and the other kids were arguing over who had to be the one to squash it. 

“I just—stood there, looking at it and it felt like all eight of its eyes were staring straight back at me, pleading. I remember thinking that it wasn’t _fair,_ that they should kill it when all it wanted was to stay warm like the rest of us. It wasn’t _its_ fault it was born a spider; wasn’t its fault that people think they’re gross or creepy. It’s just an animal, same as me, small and, and scared. 

“So I… stepped in. Told them I’d get it, except instead of stomping on it, I scooted it onto my hand—you should’ve heard how the others screamed. It nearly distracted me from the feeling of its ticklish little legs on my palm—and took it over to the doors. I didn’t actually take it outside—I’d just be condemning it to a different, slower, colder death—but I put it as high up on the wall as I could reach and told it, as seriously as I could, to build itself a nice, pretty web and catch lots of flies and live a long, happy, warm life. To not mind the others because _I_ thought it was worth keeping around, even if no one else seemed to want it.

“After that I just… didn’t mind spiders so much. Took awhile for me to get over the movement thing, though. Eventually, I realized that our eyes have difficulty seeing movements that small and that a spider’s leg works as smoothly as me curling my fingers.” Martin blinks back to himself, hand closed in a loose fist in demonstration. That was… He’s never told anyone all that, but Jon is, if nothing else, an excellent listener. Still, it was more than he bargained for, especially on a topic he despises. “S-sorry, that’s probably way more than you wanted to hear.” He looks over at Jon, who is blinking owlishly too, looking exactly as dazed and out of sorts as Martin feels. His stomach sinks. “Oh god, th-that wasn’t a, a _statement,_ was it?”

Jon shakes himself. “N-no, I don’t think so. Just a, ah, a very enthralling story.”

“What’s _that_ mean?”

“It means I… enjoy listening to you. Don’t worry—there was nothing there to feed the Eye.”

Martin tries, unsuccessfully, to not blush at _that._ “Oh. Good?”

“Probably for the best,” Jon agrees, stilted, “but—thank you. For telling me.” He turns a jigsaw piece over in his hands, then sets it in its place, where it becomes part of the pitifully small section of a wagon Jon’s grudgingly built. Martin works up more of the edges, eventually having to pause to fish through Jon’s disorganized mess for more. Five, ten minutes drag by before Jon asks, “What did the other children think of your… spider wrangling?”

Martin hums. He doesn’t know how to feel about Jon willingly engaging with him about _spiders,_ of all things. “Briefly? I was the baddest kid in school. Then I became the weird one who liked spiders. And after _that,_ I sort of… faded into the backdrop.” Below even the notice of his school’s known bullies and hadn’t that stung, in its own special, awful way.

“Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“I—Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’m over it.”

Jon purses his lips and Martin bites back a smile at the way he squirms in the now slightly strained quiet. 

“So… Care to share why you _don’t_ like spiders?” Martin offers. It’s the natural progression of the conversation, but he has no idea if this is too prying a question or if he’s committing some sort of social faux pas by asking. Jon’s face does something complicated and he has the sinking feeling that he has, in fact, crossed a line.

“Not tonight,” Jon says, shaking his head. Martin nods hurriedly.

“Of course! Sorry I asked.”

Jon just smiles—a wan little thing. “We seem to be apologizing a lot tonight.”

“Hm. You’re right.” Martin has always wrapped contrition around his shoulders like an insulating coat and these days Jon apologizes like if he’s sorry enough for existing, the world will quit kicking him, but this is a bit much, even for the two of them. “It’s hard, I guess. Talking, without stepping on any toes.”

“I’ve always been a bit pants at it myself—”

“I’d never have guessed—”

“—but I imagine we’re both a little rusty,” Jon finishes, glaring only a little at being interrupted. "We'll figure it out. Eventually."

There it is again: practice. Relearning how to be kind, how to hold your own curiosity back for the sake of someone else. Realizing that your words and actions have consequences that you don't get to choose, so instead you choose to navigate around those muddy puddles you’ve spent months stepping right through, deciding to care about the messes you leave in your wake. Jon tucks some of his hair behind his ear—a gesture Martin has learned is a bit of a nervous tic—and worries his lip. Martin finally processes the _we_ hidden in there and realizes that in this, he is not alone.

Silence falls again and Martin turns to the sweeping expanse of cloudy green-blue sky. Jon drums his fingers on the top of the table, takes a gulp of wine, and the mug is half empty when he sets it down. If Martin had to guess, the spider talk still got to him, despite his assurances.

So he casts about for something to talk about.

It hasn’t escaped his notice how Jon talks about his childhood in acerbic starts-and-stops, so clearly that’s not the best topic. Family is trouble, for both of them. School could be interesting, but Martin’s afraid he wouldn’t have much to contribute that wouldn’t make Jon’s eyes go soft and sad in that way that makes something uncomfortable and skittish unfold behind Martin’s ribs.

He wishes he weren’t so _bad_ at this and curses the Lonely for taking any sort of social grace he might have had and holding it below the waves until it sank. Not that he’s ever been particularly adept at navigating social situations, but still, he likes to think that he hadn’t been this awful at just _talking_ before.

“What’s your weirdest hobby?” Martin finds himself asking, completely non sequitur. Which, while not the most inspired of topics, it seems relatively safe. A perfectly bland get-to-know-you question.

“Pardon?” Jon asks.

“Weirdest— _non supernatural—_ hobby. Or, it doesn’t even have to be weird, just surprising. Something people don’t expect.”

“Anything that takes me out of a dark and dusty library would surprise you,” Jon says, desert dry, but still he pauses to consider, canting his head to the side. “Not much time for hobbies recently.”

Not letting him dodge the question, Martin shoots right back, “From before, then.”

“Fine, fine. Hm… When I was younger—first few years at uni—I collected those disposable spoons you get at ice cream shops.”

That’s—

“Jon, that’s _amazing,”_ unable to contain his delight, Martin leans forward, palms pressed flat to the tabletop, causing the pieces to shift and rise up like tiny tectonic plates. Jon hums noncommittally. “Why?”

He shrugs. “I don’t like cones—too messy if you don’t eat your ice cream fast enough and I like to savor it—and I think I liked the colors? Good for chewing on while you walk, as well.”

“Were there… certain qualities you looked for, or…?”

“There were. Obviously wooden spoons were out of the question, since they aren’t brightly colored and the taste is all wrong, anyways. The ones meant to look like metal were also out, because the paint, or whatever it is, can flake off. What else...” Martin rests his cheek on his closed fist as he watches Jon chatter away. He seems more at ease talking about something silly like this. His shoulders sit a bit looser and he gestures airily while he thinks, tapping middle finger and thumb together. “Hm, opacity and shape were important too. The more like a chisel or spade, the better.”

“Not rounded?”

“No. Those are just… cheap teaspoons.”

Martin laughs. “Brightly colored mini spades. Got it. What did you do with them all?”

Jon waves dismissively, like one would shoo away a bothersome fly. “Threw them in a box and kept it under my bed; it’s not exactly the sort of thing you put on display.”

“Hm. I guess. Why’d you stop?”

Slowly, Jon’s cheeks flush an interesting, rich russet. “I, ah, I didn’t. Not really.”

So that means… Martin remembers his first birthday with the rest of the Archive crew—Tim and Jon and the thing that sits, hulking and disjointed, in place of all his memories of Sasha, the ice cream parlor, Jon jabbing meaningfully at the air with his translucent blue spoon while he rambled on and on and on about emulsifiers. Did he keep that one, too?

Martin doesn’t ask. “Huh,” he says, instead, then, “I guess ice cream _is_ a pretty low priority. Tragic, that.”

“Precisely,” Jon says. “No time for a scoop between averting multiple apocalypses and becoming a monster.” Martin presses his lips together, tonguing the line of his molars. He doesn’t like it when Jon talks about himself that way, but he doesn’t want to ruin the night by arguing the point. He lets it slide, albeit reluctantly, but Jon must see something on his face because he offers up, “A-and what about you? Weirdest hobby?”

He’s not exactly surprised to have the question turned back on him, but Martin hadn’t thought to prepare an answer. He thinks for a moment before saying, "It’s not exactly weird, but… I played rugby."

Gratifyingly, Jon gasps. "You did _not.”_

"I did!" Twenty and angry and desperately trying not to be, he played with a handful of local guys twice a month or so, in the park two blocks from where he lived. Between his job and his job and his mum, he couldn’t make all the games or practices, informal as they were, but the other men seemed happy enough to have him when he did show. His stature probably helped—tall and heavy-set—and he had enough pent-up frustration to not shy away from tackling people or rolling about in the mud. “I was actually pretty good.”

Jon just gawks. “You,” he finally manages, weakly.

“Yeah, me,” Martin laughs, “I feel like I should be a bit offended.”

Jon snaps his jaw shut. “Sorry, it’s just… You’re so—” he cuts himself off and gestures helplessly at Martin.

Martin pinks a bit. “So what?”

_“You!_ You like poetry a-and recording said poetry on company property because it’s ‘retro’ and—goddamn—puzzles!” His hands flutter as he works himself up, the motion agitated yet still endearing. “I never thought you would be a, a _jock.”_ Jon spits the word like he’s been betrayed.

“I’m not! Yes, okay, I like some sports, but that hardly makes me a jock.”

“Some,” Jon whispers. His eyes are bright and intense and there’s poorly concealed delight lurking in the way he chews the inside of his lip. “What else?”

“O-oh, hah, I guess ice hockey isn’t bad?”

“Hockey.” It’s full of gleeful scorn. “That’s just—Martin, that’s just people running around with sticks.”

_“Skating_ around with sticks,” Martin corrects. “It’s fun.”

“Ridiculous. I’m dating a jock.” Jon mutters it, likely meant only for his own ears, but Martin still hears. Despite the light bullying, his cheeks flame red. _Dating._ Christ, said like that it sounds so _official._ Louder, Jon says, “You have a very… interesting definition of fun.”

“Well, we can’t all have a collection of chewed-on plastic spoons, _Jon.”_

Jon points a finger at him. “I told you that in confidence. You can’t hold it against me.”

“Can and _will,”_ Martin promises. He’s grinning, and he feels so transparently happy, and smitten, and besotted that he thinks he should be embarrassed, but Jon is smiling too, looking just as enamored as Martin feels, the expression pushing up and rounding out the apples of his cheeks, crinkling his eyes. The puzzle lies between them, less than half finished, but Martin is more than happy with the progress they’ve made tonight.

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Martin says solemnly, then brings the stone down with a sickening _crack!_ that makes the windowpane shudder. Embedded in the jamb, the nail sinks half an inch into the wooden frame.

“Why are you apologizing?” Jon asks. Martin yelps and whirls to find him peering around the side of the cottage, fingers spread wide on the yellowy siding. Jon looks faintly bemused, eyebrows raised and one of those vague smiles haunting the corners of his lips. “It’s not like the house can feel pain.”

“It’s the principle of the matter,” Martin says, turning back to the window and bringing the stone down on the nail once more, “besides, what would you know about—architectural pain receptors?”

Jon clears his throat meaningfully. “I mean…”

“No! No. Keep your Knowledge to yourself.”

Jon laughs, the sound oddly dull in the open air. “Suit yourself.” He comes closer, gingerly stepping over sharp, dried bits of vegetation. His feet are bare and Martin bites back the urge to chide him. “What are you up to?”

“You remember when I got that painting?”

“The catrait, yes.” Martin rolls his eyes. Jon’s fondness for unnecessary portmanteaus is as ridiculous and annoying as it is endearing.

“Well, I may have also bought some wind chimes? I thought they’d be, I dunno, cute, I guess.”

“Cute,” Jon echoes, not unkindly. He pulls up beside Martin and squints consideringly at the window frame. He bobbles his head side to side. “Fits with the aesthetic, I suppose. Do you need help?”

Martin puffs a laugh as he brings the rock down once more, throwing his aim off so he misses the nail. He barely avoids crushing his fingers and winces at the dent his makeshift hammer leaves in the siding. “Jon, I love you, but this isn’t exactly a two person job.”

Beside him, Jon goes very still.

Martin also goes very, _very_ still.

He can _feel_ Jon blinking at him. His blush creeps over his entire face, extends down his throat, a slow wave of fire that stains his skin splotchy, ugly red. The nail protrudes from the side of their house at an unwieldy angle, perfectly showcasing his inexperience as a handyman. Perhaps he should pull it out and try again. Maybe take it around to the front. The stoop could be nice.

“Martin,” Jon begins and Martin cannot, _will not_ try to decipher what that tone means. Instead, he laughs, overly loud and nervous.

“Y’know,” he says, voice pitched high and fast in that way he hates, the way that broadcasts every small and pitiable thing about him when he’s upset, or anxious, or embarrassed, or angry, or— “I think the window might not be the, the best place. Got to—got to get the best,” Jon makes a sound, some bitten off syllable, but Martin babbles on, waving his fists-and-stone in a way that he hopes is distracting, “you know, air flow for a-all the bits, and I just don’t think that back here, by the window, will um, ah, do it. So I’ll just—” he wrestles, briefly, with the nail, and gives up when it doesn’t immediately come free, “—find something else, I guess!”

“Martin,” Jon cuts in, forceful enough to slice through the deluge of embarrassed rambling. He latches onto Martin’s flailing arm, gently pries the stone out of his death grip, and drops it carelessly to the side, where neither of them are in danger of bludgeoning. He’s smiling—a big, beaming thing that Martin has never seen before—and horrifyingly, more heat floods Martin’s face, wrapping its stifling little fingers around the back of his neck. God, he’s handsome, even when he’s smiling at Martin’s expense, even when Martin has brought the word _love_ into a relationship that’s barely just begun. “Martin, calm down. I-I… I love you, too.” He says it simply, although his own cheeks are tinged dark and hot. “I didn’t say anything, because I know you weren’t in your right mind before, and then I didn’t want to overwhelm you, o-or pressure you into saying it back, but. I do. I do love you.” He laughs helplessly and Martin just gapes, off balance and feeling like the world has stopped its spinning around its own axis. “Have done for a long time, actually.”

“Oh.” To his own ears, he sounds faint. There’s concern writ plain across Jon’s face: in the knitting of his dark, silver streaked brows; in the tightening press of his chapped lips; in the way he leans towards Martin, rocks up onto the balls of his feet, tips forward like he can’t help but get closer, reach out, hold close.

“Are you alright? You look—Do you need to sit?”

Martin laughs, strained, and shakes his head. “No, I’m just—Bit startled.” Despite his words, he sinks down anyways, ungracefully folding himself cross legged amongst the dirt and detritus of their garden. Jon follows more fluidly, kneeling so his knee presses against Martin’s. “I knew—know—you love me, but it’s different to actually hear it.” Jon reaches for him and he gratefully twines their fingers, looks down at the alternating mosaic they make—brown and brown and skin and skin. Idly, he notes that Jon’s nails are pale and ragged from biting and he wants to file them down so he cannot hurt himself on their jagged edges. “It’s not something I’ve heard much in my life.”

Jon looks—stricken. Which is absurd, because you don’t have to hear those three words all strung together to know that someone loves you. So what if his mum never said it, at least not that he can remember with great clarity? So what if his friends, such as they were, had never been the type to show affection, much less vocalize it? So what if in his painfully short list of ex-boyfriends, none of them were ever much for pillow talk, or regular talk, really, and never whispered it back?

“Well,” Jon says, and his voice is rough with some emotion that Martin has never heard from him. He sounds close to tears, which is also absurd, because despite the worms and burns and kidnappings and deaths of friends, despite the coma and the abandonment and the heavy mantle of inhumanity, he’s never seen Jon _cry._ “I suppose I’ll just have to change that.” He tugs Martin’s hand up to his lips and presses a lingering, closed-mouth kiss to the back of his wrist; he feels Jon exhale shakily against his forearm. He pulls away a bit and looks up at Martin through the smudged sweep of his eyelashes. “I love you, Martin.”

Even though he knew it was coming, the words still knock the breath from his lungs. He chokes a little and realizes that he might be on the verge of crying, too. Martin swallows thickly, audibly, and smiles a wobbly smile. “I love you, too.”

The two of them sound like a ricocheting echo, a feedback loop, a scratched CD skipping over to the same line in the chorus: _I-I-I, love-love-love, you-you-you._

It thrills him to say it; his mum scowled if he said it with his goodnight wishes, his friends basked in their toxic masculinity and snickered at his softness, his romances abruptly ended after the utterance of those three little words. It thrills him, because he sees the way Jon melts even as he blushes fiercely, sees the steely devotion in his eyes, and knows that this is something that he would never wield against him.

The chimes sit in a disorganized pile of metal and wood and fraying cords and Martin remembers what he originally set out to do. “Still want to help?”

“Always,” says Jon. They stand, together, hammer the nail in, together, hang the chimes, together, and laugh, together, when they slip easily from the nail and crash to the dirt in a discordant jumble of tinny notes.

“Hook might be better,” Martin offers, wiping his eyes, and together, they go off to look.

* * *

A damp, frigid gust of air sweeps through the room, whistling low and mournful as it drags across Martin, snapping him awake. It’s a hollow, echoing sound, one he’s always associated with a home left dark and empty and abandoned, fallen into disrepair without a loving hand to patch the roof when it leaks or close a window against the biting wind.

Martin struggles upright and a blanket slips from around his shoulders to puddle in his lap. He squints through his vision’s myopic blur, just able to make out the shape of the fireplace, cold and dark, and realizes he must have fallen asleep on the sofa in the living room.

He hadn’t meant to, he doesn’t think; napping there always does something awful to his back that haunts him for ages after the initial mistake. He remembers—wedging his toes between the cushions to keep them warm, wrapping his arms about his middle against the ambient chill, trying to find a way to rest his head so his glasses didn’t dig into the bridge of his nose.

Martin stands, leaving the blanket in a messy wad. It’s one he recognizes: the heavy duvet that has covered the bed the past few days. He swipes his glasses from where they’re carefully folded on the coffee table as another icy, moaning breeze swirls about his legs, sending goosebumps up and down his arms.

Did he leave a window open?

Is Jon cold, too?

Martin turns a little at that. He doesn’t—Jon had been reading, right, Martin’s feet propped in his lap, gently scratching distracted nails through Martin’s coarse leg hair. He eventually went to get ready for bed, but rather than follow, Martin curled deeper into the cushions as Jon’s body heat dissipated. Now the sofa looks unlived in, the imprint of Martin’s body already faded.

The floorboards are cold against his soles, so cold they almost feel slick, and Martin shivers as he creeps down the hall towards the bedroom. It’s empty, the bed unoccupied, the bathroom dark, and worry finally begins to settle in the pit of his stomach. He turns on his heel and returns to the living room, steps light and quick, verging on panicked.

Martin pauses, hand curled around the hallway’s corner. The front door is ajar. Open, but just the barest sliver. The latch is fiddly if you don’t slam it and give the knob a sharp jerk.

Slowly, so slowly, slow enough that it doesn’t creak for once, Martin drags the door open to peek out. The air leaves his lungs in a shuddery sigh when he is greeted by the reassuring sight of Jon sat on the front stoop, shoulders slumped and bare legs draped across the few squat stairs leading up to the door. It’s raining, just a bit, thin and miserable from patchy clouds.

Jon’s posture is impeccable—when he knows he’s under observation. Left to his own devices, he sort of… collapses into himself. A dying star, perhaps, or a wilting rose, or an elderly man bent low under the weight of all he’s witnessed.

These analogies are going nowhere pleasant, so Martin steps through the door, snagging Jon’s coat as he goes, because _of course_ the idiot had tucked a blanket around Martin but didn’t think to take one for himself, or even put on _trousers._

“You’ll catch a cold sitting out here,” Martin says as he folds himself down next to him on the step. He tries to keep his tone light, gentle, and judgement-free, but—it’s somewhere in the early hours of the morning and his heart still beats a fluttery tattoo in his throat. “Here.”

Jon jumps, guiltily, at his voice, and takes the proffered coat. It’s the hideous one they bought from the secondhand shop so he didn’t have to keep pilfering Martin’s that hang much too big on his lean frame. It’s all loud colors and puffy quilting that makes him look like he’s fresh from the eighties when he zips it up. Jon hates it, quite vocally; Martin loves its unapologetic hideousness. “Martin, hi,” Jon rasps, “I didn’t—I had hoped—” He sighs, hands bunching up the fabric in two fists. “Thank you,” he settles on.

Martin breathes in the sharp air and pushes the remnants of his panic down. “Mm. ‘Course.”

A breeze winds its way across the moors and the rain spits down upon the ground and their delicate wind chimes clink together softly, echoing from around the side of the house. Martin’s never had the chance to own a set before now, but he’s always liked the thought of them; a reminder that outside, the world continues on, breathing and sighing and making its music. They’re just as romantic as he’d imagined, but there’s a melancholy to them that he hadn’t foreseen. A loneliness. They ring out their melodies regardless of their audience, an instrument that doesn’t require a single living creature to play it. When he can’t sleep at night, he’ll imagine he’s lost out in the peat of the bogs and fens where the only sound is the rustle of grass and faint, far-off ringing.

Jon still hasn’t put on his coat, just stares down at it, all crinkled and rumpled. His quiet sniff is nearly lost to the ambient sounds of night. Martin bumps his shoulder with his own, gently. “Coat’s not gonna do you much good like that.”

“R-right. Right,” Jon says, sniffling once again, and goes about putting it on. It makes him look small, and disheveled—dressed in nothing but his pants and shirt and tacky coat, hair tucked ungracefully down the collar. He turns his dark eyes on Martin, black with only the mottled moon to illuminate them. “Happy?” he huffs.

Martin shrugs. “Not really, but we’re getting there.”

“I can’t help but notice _you_ don’t have a jacket.”

Oh. Right he is. _“I’m_ not a bean pole that’ll be blown over by a stiff breeze.” Still, Martin stands and snags his own coat from just inside the door before settling back down. He shrugs it on slowly, then leans against Jon’s arm. “What are we doing, out here?”

“Hiding from the things that want to kill us?”

“True, but not what I meant.”

Jon tugs at his coat’s worn cuff, legs stretched out before him. His feet are wet, Martin notices, all the way up to the ankle, rain-splattered. They’re one of the few unscarred parts of him, and the realization makes something unpleasant uncoil deep in Martin’s belly.

“Watching, I suppose?” Jon scrubs at his face, then sighs. He looks deeply tired; Martin feels it. “Taking it all in. I know it can’t, _we_ can’t stay like this forever. We’ll have to face everything eventually, so I just thought… Before it all goes wrong, I thought I’d… look my fill. I guess.”

“Oh, Jon,” Martin sighs. They do a lot of that. Sighing. _Exhausted,_ Jon called them. He wraps his arm around Jon’s shoulders and pulls him into a weak, awkward side hug. Jon melts into it, head falling to rest on Martin’s shoulder. “Who says it has to go wrong?”

Jon doesn’t even bother with scoffing. “You know better than that, Martin.”

“... Yeah.” 

Martin can’t carry a tune in a bucket, but Jon had once idly remarked the chimes are in the key of D minor. Their slow, mournful ringing swells between them and Martin wants to storm outside and yank them off their hook, tie a band around them, make everything quiet and still, just for a moment. _Quit being so atmospheric,_ he wants to tell them. Uncaring, they clink on and on and on…

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” Jon says, suddenly, “so. I’m sorry, if I did.” That’s another thing they do a lot these days, too. If you say it too much, does _sorry_ become a useless platitude and lose all meaning? Some people feel that way about the words _I_ and _love_ and _you,_ set next to each other like fragile porcelain, only meant for special occasions. Then again, they both have a lot to be sorry for.

“Can’t say I _loved_ finding you gone, but I get it.” He rests his cheek against the top of Jon’s head, feels the warmth radiating from his scalp. “Have you slept at all?”

Jon makes a noncommittal sound. “Honestly? I-I didn’t want to lie in bed alone, but you were asleep by the time I came back—you looked so peaceful. I was feeling… fidgety,” here, he fidgets with the coat’s zip, “and I know sleep is hard, for you, so I came out here. Watched the world go by. Held onto the hours.”

Time goes funny when you don’t sleep. It stretches oddly, becomes malleable, like holding fruit chews in your fist until they become all gooey. “Well, next time it happens, wake me up and we can catch a cold together.” He doesn’t want to miss a moment with Jon. It’s something he’s avoided thinking about—the inevitable end to their not-quite-bliss—too busy trying to cling to the one good thing in recent memory, but now… His anxiety has some new fodder, at least.

Jon scoffs and pulls away enough to level his driest, most unimpressed look at Martin. “Martin, you’re a bear if I interrupt you when you’re napping.”

“So are you! I’ve never met someone who hates mornings as much as you.” A pair of old, grizzled bears, making their den out in the Highlands. Who’d have thought. “Seriously, though. You hold onto the hours, and I’ll, I don’t know, hold onto you. Easy.”

“If you’re sure…” Jon sounds unconvinced, so Martin tugs him back into the crook of his side. He goes willingly, pressing himself tight against Martin.

The rain collects into pathetic, frigid, murky puddles out in the yard that reflect the sparse, wispy clouds on their broken surfaces. Martin breathes in the smell of Jon’s hair—almonds and honey, skin and dust. Jon trembles against him, sniffing quietly.

It’s the chill, the haunting ringing echoing out into the night, nothing more. Martin doesn’t say anything when Jon wipes at his eyes, then his nose, with shaking hands.

“I like it here, Martin,” says Jon, oh so quietly, like a confession. “I like the quiet, the distance, a-and I like sharing it with you.”

Martin twists slightly to press his lips to Jon’s hair in a vague, lingering kiss. “I like it, too,” he murmurs. It hurts, sometimes, just how happy he is here. If he thinks on it too hard, it starts to feel untenable.

“I don’t… I don’t want this to end. I don’t know if it’s the fear, or the paranoia, or just simple experience, but I don’t think I’m meant to, to live out my days, such as they may be, in domestic bliss.”

The pit of Martin’s stomach turns to a heavy hunk of ice. “What do you mean?” he asks slowly, tongue thick, unwieldy.

“I don’t think I get a happy ending, Martin. I mean, you know what I am.” He stretches his arms and legs out, as though putting himself on display like an insect pinned to a board, “The monster doesn’t get a hideaway with the one he loves.”

“Please don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

“Jon, I… You’re not a _monster,_ okay?” He looks ready to protest, leaning back, out from the safety of Martin’s arms. “You’re different, sure, but not a monster. You’re, you’re fighting it. Doing what you can to, to mitigate any damage you might cause. I know you don’t _revel_ in it.” Martin pauses to collect himself and make sure his voice doesn’t shake as he says, “And… i-if you don’t get a happy ending, I don’t either. So—can’t I be selfish? Can’t I want us to be okay after this is all done?”

“It might never be done,” Jon murmurs. “I’m— _we’re_ still tied to the Institute.”

“So someday we go back and kill Elias and live out the rest of our lives.”

"Martin, it’s… it’s not that simple."

"Fine. Maybe not. But we can figure that out when we come to it. For now can’t we just—push it aside and focus on us? What we have right here?”

"I," Jon bows his head, like he’s ashamed, “I wish I could. My mind is so loud and—I don’t think I know how to make it quiet, anymore.” Between them, he taps his fingers slowly against the step, somehow in time with the chimes, like he just _knows_ when the paddle will catch the breeze, when the clapper will bump against metal. Martin covers his hand with his own.

“I don’t—Is there anything I can do? Can I—help?"

Jon inhales, long and slow. "I don't think you can." He twists his hand in Martin's to intertwine their fingers. "Christ. Remember when you... _suggested_ I find a therapist?"

He does, even if it feels like lifetimes ago. "Mm. I seem to remember it _not_ going over well."

"No, it didn't," Jon admits, "but I think you had the right of it." He laughs, wetly, and there’s a misplaced humor to it. “In fact, I think we’d both benefit from seeing one.”

It’s irksome that he’s not wrong. “Where would we find a therapist who, who specializes in supernatural fear trauma?”

Jon shrugs. “Melanie managed, somehow.”

“I guess. That doesn’t help us _now,_ though.” Wordless, Jon pulls their joined hands into his lap to pluck at Martin’s fingers. Martin sucks on his teeth as he thinks. “I think you need a hobby.”

“A hobby.”

“Yeah. Something that’s just—something you enjoy.”

“Yes, I know what a hobby is,” Jon snaps, then softens. “I… appreciate what you’re trying to do, but can we, can we just… sit, a while?”

Ah. 

Not everything can be fixed; Martin knows that, is trying to accept it. Sometimes all you can do is stew in your hurt. Other times you sit with someone while they do the stewing. “Yeah, of course, Jon.” He scoots closer to Jon on the step, pulls him so he’s angled against Martin’s chest. Like this, slumped boneless, his head is at the perfect height for Martin to rest his chin on. So he does. Jon breathes out, then in, his rib cage expanding, pressing back into Martin. “Zip up your coat, yeah?”

Jon grumbles, but does as he’s asked, the dull, scraping sound of the zip loud in the empty silence. Martin tucks a hand into one of Jon’s pockets.

They sit. The chimes ring. The thin rain eventually stops and the stars peek through windows in the clouds. They huddle close and hold on to one another.

**Author's Note:**

> me, listening to the popular horror podcast _the magnus archives:_ cool, but what if they talked to each other?
> 
> you can track me down on either tumblr (@[humbleboar](https://humbleboar.tumblr.com/)) or twitter (@[chitalpas](https://twitter.com/chitalpas))! i'm more active on tumblr these days, but feel free to say hi wherever u like. thank u so much for reading and please, stay safe and check in with those you love 💕


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